Contingency planning actioning at last mile dark stores for big basket

Abstract

Big Basket performs deliveries to its customers from its last-mile dark stores with some 5000 to 6000 SKUs. While the delivery slots are available throughout the day and open for the next few days when the customer places an order, most orders are for the same day or the next day. Prompt delivery as per committed slots assumes the availability of products, enough manpower availability for back-end and front-end at these stores. While resource planning takes care of materials and people in general, there are situations when these may be short. Similarly, there could be situations where there are enough resources, but customer orders far exceed the planned numbers, resulting in slots getting closed for the same day and next day well in advance.