M&SOM Practice Platform

Enabling Last-mile Workforce Welfare and Productivity: Research Opportunities from the Indian E-commerce Industry

Abstract

Flipkart, one of the largest e-commerce players in India, delivers more than 3.5m packages per day. From a provider's perspective, the cost of delivery including the number of attempts to make a successful delivery is an important component of business profitability; however, the welfare of the delivery workforce cannot be ignored in the network decision-making. The delivery workforce “wishmasters”—who make the last-mile connection with the consumers play a crucial role in enhancing the doorstep experience through timely deliveries, collecting payments, and also managing returns. With rising opportunities for gig economy workers, absenteeism and attrition are increasingly common phenomena in platform businesses. Hence, there is a need to ensure that all wishmasters are provided with equal opportunities to earn their wages by maximizing the number of shipments they deliver. In this seminar, we highlight three last-mile optimization problems around last-mile hub location, last-mile capacity estimation with uncertain delivery locations, and equitable allocation of shipments among the wishmasters. Solving these problems can not only improve the overall efficiency in the last mile but also benefit the wishmasters through higher daily earning potential.

Presenters: Chandrasekhar K, Shailendra Kumar, and Debjit Roy

Chandrasekhar K is an analytics professional with overall 15+ years of experience. He is an alumnus of BITS Pilani and NITIE Mumbai and has worked with organizations such as Oracle and Dell in the past. Currently, he is a Senior Analytics Manager at Flipkart and leads the analytics teams for Large supply chain and Jeeves. He has solved multiple supply chain problems in warehousing, sortation center, transport, and post-purchase services through analytics. He has also applied analytics to segment customers and derive business insights for growth in Grocery and hyperlocal E-commerce. He is also an Edelman INFORMS Laureate—class of 2013.

Shailendra Kumar is a supply chain analytics professional at Flipkart with 15+ years of experience in the field of data analytics including 10 years in the supply chain. He has earned a Postgraduate degree in statistics from Delhi University. Before joining Flipkart in 2016, he worked at organizations such as Sony Corporation, TCS, Bluestar, and Harman International. He has rich experience in leading, mentoring, and building a team of high-performing analytical resources in delivering analytics solutions, solving complex business problems by leveraging algorithms and advanced analytics, and building trusted relationships with stakeholders. In particular, he has worked on supply chain problems such as network optimization (recommending the right location for onboarding new delivery partners), cost optimization (measuring manpower productivity), capacity utilization and vehicle resizing, route bottleneck analysis, transit time rationalization, demand-driven forecasting, and improving customers doorstep experiences.

Debjit Roy is an Institute Chair Professor in the Operations and Decision Sciences area at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, India. He holds a PhD in Industrial Engineering (with a major in Decision Sciences/Operations Research and a minor in Computer Science) and an MS in Manufacturing Systems Engineering from the University of Wisconsin–Madison besides an MSc (Engineering) from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. His research focuses on improving system performance using quantitative methods such as stochastic modeling and optimization. His specific research interests are to estimate the performance of logistical and service systems such as container terminals, automated distribution centers, vehicle rental, healthcare, and restaurant systems. He has received several research awards including the INFORMS IAAA award (2022), IIE Transactions best conference paper award in Facility Logistics (2011, 2019), honorable mention for the Jack Meredith best paper award in the Journal of Operations Management (2019), and honorable mention designation in the IIE Transactions best applications paper award competition (2016), and has published in several leading international journals such as Operations Research, Transportation Science, Journal of Operations Management, Production and Operations Management, IISE Transactions, and Interfaces.

---

If you have any trouble accessing any content on this page, please contact the managing editor, Machelle Zellers, at [email protected].

Back to M&SOM's Practice Platform home page.