Patent ID: 11972390
Assignee: AMAZON TECHNOLOGIES, INC.
Field: IT methods for management (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G | IPC G

Claim 0:
1. A computer-implemented method comprising:
determining a forecasted demand for transporting items between a source node and a destination node of a transportation network;
determining a set of constraints associated with a handling node of the transportation network, the handling node being between the source node and the destination node and associated with an inventory management system configured to control handling equipment of the handling node, the set of constraints comprising a throughput of the handling node and a limit on a number of network paths into or out of the handling node;
determining a set of costs associated with transportation of the items from the source node to the destination node;
generating, by using an optimization model, a transportation plan that controls deployment of resources of the transportation network and that comprises (i) a network path that is within the transportation network, includes the handling node, and connects the source node and the destination node, and (ii) a type of item handling at each node of the network path, wherein:
the optimization model receives the forecasted demand, the set of constraints, and the set of costs as inputs, uses network paths and types of item handling as variables, and optimizes an optimization parameter of the transportation network,
the transportation plan is generated by at least:
in a first stage:
ranking source node-destination node pairs based on a total volume of items and a total number if item handlings between each node-destination node pair;
generating, from the source node-destination node pairs, a first subset of the source node-destination node pairs and a second subset of the source node-destination node pairs, the first subset associated with a higher ranking than the second subset;
determining first network paths for the first subset and second network paths for the second subset;
executing the optimization model a first time to optimize the optimization parameter, the executing at the first time using the inputs, using the first network paths as first variables, forgoing use of the types of item handling, and outputting first selected network paths from the first variables subject to at least the limit on the number of network paths, the first selected network paths comprising the network path, and
executing the optimization model a second time to optimize the optimization parameter, the executing at the second time using the inputs, using the second network paths as second variables, forgoing use of the types of item handling, and outputting second selected network paths from the second variables subject to at least the limit on the number of network paths, and

in a second stage, executing the optimization model a third time to re-optimize the optimization parameter, the executing at the third time using the inputs, using the first and second selected network paths as additional inputs, using the types of item handling as third variables that vary between at least item cross-docking of items and item sorting, and outputting a first type of item handling for the handling node from the second variables subject to at least the throughput of the handling node, a subset of the items to be handled at the handling node according to the first type of item handling, and a second type of item handling for another handling node to handle another subset of the items; and

outputting at least a portion of the transportation plan to the inventory management system, wherein outputting the transportation plan comprises controlling operations of one or more unmanned vehicles based at least in part on the transportation plan thereby causing an improvement to operations of the unmanned vehicles based at least in part on transportation plan.