Title: Restructuring Fulfillment and Transportation in Logistics Networks
Date: January 12, 2026
Time: 12:00 pm - 2:00 pm EST
Meeting Link: Microsoft Teams Meeting
Nidhima Grover
PhD Candidate in Operations Research
School of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology
Thesis Committee:
Dr. Benoit Montreuil (advisor), School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology
Dr. Alejandro Toriello, School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology
Dr. Mathieu Dahan, School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology
Dr. Walid Klibi, Supply Chain Center of Excellence, KEDGE Business School
Dr. Louis Faugère, Modeling and Optimization team, Amazon
Dr. Xiaoyan Si, Modeling and Optimization team, Amazon
Abstract:
Logistics networks form the backbone of global supply chains, enabling the movement, consolidation, storage, and fulfillment of goods across geographically distributed facilities and transportation modes. Despite their central role, the global logistics industry faces persistent challenges related to sustainability, resilience, and efficiency, driven largely by inefficiencies in transportation network design and fulfillment operations. In response, hyperconnected logistics networks have emerged as a promising solution, leveraging multi-tier, meshed hub structures and interconnectivity to enhance efficiency, resilience, and sustainability. On the fulfillment side, retail networks are experiencing rapid growth in scale and complexity. Increasing flexibility in choice of fulfillment center (FC) for fulfilling orders creates opportunities for inventory pooling and broader product availability, but also introduces challenging trade-offs among cost, speed, and service quality. This thesis focuses on restructuring logistics networks across both transportation and deployment layers to improve efficiency and reduce cost.
In Chapter 2, we propose a comprehensive definitional framework for hyperconnected logistics networks that integrates key concepts such as tiered network topology, hub interconnectivity, consolidation, and containerization, specifically for the transportation layer in logistics networks. Moreover, we present a practical greenfield as well as brownfield design approach for a hyperconnected logistics network in the United States, utilizing a representative demand scenario and accompanying network visualizations to enhance comprehension. Our research aims to unlock the potential of hyperconnected logistics networks as a crucial component of the PI, offering significant benefits to the global logistics industry and society as a whole.
In Chapter 3, we introduce regionalization, which has recently emerged as an effective strategy to address the fulfillment challenges by partitioning fulfillment networks into interconnected regions. Orders that originate within a region are primarily fulfilled by centers associated with the region, simplifying network design, and delivering significant gains in cost and speed. We propose an optimization model to design the fulfillment regions while simultaneously assigning fulfillment centers (FCs) to match each region's demand; to our knowledge, this is a novel problem that has not been studied in the literature. Two of the model's main challenges include a non-linear objective function and contiguity constraints on the regions. We propose a local search heuristic to solve the problem at scale, along with efficient lower bounds to benchmark solution quality. Furthermore, we demonstrate that choosing appropriate parameters for designing regions can have a significant effect on solution quality, and can result in more demand being fulfilled within service guarantee deadlines.
In Chapter 4, we study a variant of regionalization where we can assign FCs to more than one region (multi-mapping) and analyze its effect on cost of fulfillment. We introduce a modeling and solution framework to design regions and assign FCs to more than one region simultaneously, using a non-linear mixed integer program. Furthermore, we introduce a novel simulation-based evaluation framework that combines inbound decisions of inventory assortment, buying, and placement with outbound decisions of fulfillment from FCs to customers. This helps us demonstrate the significance of multi-mapping compared to single mapping, while considering several practical complexities of the fulfillment network.