The Flipkart Group, one of India's foremost digital commerce entities, serves more than 500 million registered users and offers a vast selection of more than 150 million products, connecting customers with 1.4 million sellers. To keep pace with rapid growth and the evolving ecosystem of e-commerce in India, Flipkart embarked on a transformational overhaul of its supply chain planning technology in 2021. This transformation led to the development of an advanced, fully integrated supply chain planning platform, built on machine learning and operations research techniques. The platform comprises two core layers: forecasting and optimization. The forecasting layer leverages a suite of statistical and machine learning techniques to produce multilevel demand forecasts. The optimization layer converts forecasts into actionable decisions across three key domains: inventory management, capacity planning, and network flow planning. These decisions collectively maximize delivery speed and reliability, minimizing operational costs. Flipkart has scaled this platform to automate and optimize end-to-end supply chain operations. Its impact has been profound: leading to a 10% increase in manpower utilization, a 50% reduction in unhealthy inventory, and a 50% increase in one-day deliveries.
