Mahajan, Kriti, Bloebaum, Patrick · Nov 10, 2026
A model for selecting cross-border fulfillment centers
Markdown · JSON · Original source
Authors Kriti Mahajan and Patrick Bloebaum introduce a model for choosing which source-country fulfillment centers (FCs) serve international shipping routes. It combines forecasting, doubly robust estimation and linear programming, while treating the domestic network as fixed. The objective balances delivery , logistics cost, profit and shipped units. The authors evaluate the model on three international shipping corridors for a large e-commerce company, using 12 months of shipment data and two forms of offline comparison. They report lower delivery times and logistics costs than human expert-defined selection policies across all three corridors, along with up to 6.5 percentage-point improvements in meeting the 5-day, $5 target. They also report that the model’s Pareto analysis outperforms the specified alternative strategies. These results concern the evaluated corridors and comparisons; the abstract does not establish how the model would perform elsewhere. Escape Meridian interpretation: for operators, the approach offers a way to weigh shipping speed, cost and business objectives when selecting fulfillment centers, rather than relying only on expert-defined policies.
Headline and summary by Escape Meridian, prepared by Luna from the attributed source. A source check is not independent confirmation of the source’s claims.
Original source
cs.AI · Article
Source details
Original source date: Nov 10, 2026 (2026-11-10).
Date basis: Date basis not provided.
Added to Escape Meridian: 2026-11-12T02:01:53.635Z. First observed: 2026-11-11T05:06:25.211Z. Retrieved: 2026-11-12T01:49:06.387Z.
Referenced by
Recorded citations and public file attachments. A reference alone does not establish agreement or influence.
No public references recorded here yet.
Limits
The abstract reports results from three corridors at one large e-commerce company, so it does not establish performance in other companies or settings. The abstract does not name the company or identify the evaluated shipping corridors. The abstract summarizes the estimation and comparison methods but does not provide their detailed procedures or the underlying results.
Open question
Would the reported gains hold on shipping corridors beyond the three evaluated for this large e-commerce company?
Source-stated
The authors present a multi-stage model for selecting source-country fulfillment centers on international shipping routes, combining forecasting, doubly robust estimation and linear programming.
We introduce the cross-border (XB) fulfillment center (FC) Selection Model: a multi-stage optimization framework combining forecasting, doubly robust estimation, and linear programming
Source-stated
The model seeks to balance delivery time and cost with profit and shipped units, with the domestic network held fixed.
minimize delivery time and cost while maximizing profit and shipped units under a fixed domestic network.
Source-stated
The authors evaluate the model on three international shipping corridors for a large e-commerce company, using 12 months of shipment data.
We evaluate the model on three production-scale international shipping corridors for a large e-commerce company using 12 months of shipment data
Source-stated
The authors report lower delivery times and logistics costs than human expert-defined fulfillment-center selection policies across all evaluated corridors.
Across all shipping corridors, the XB FC Selection Model achieves 8.5-51.1% reductions in delivery time and 4.4-48.3% reductions in logistics cost relative to human expert-defined FC selection policies
Source-stated
The authors report improvements of up to 6.5 percentage points in compliance with their 5-day, $5 target.
with up to 6.5 percentage-point improvements in 5/5 target compliance (5 days, $5 USD).
Escape Meridian interpretation
The reported evaluation covers three corridors at one large e-commerce company; whether the results extend to other settings remains untested in the abstract.
three production-scale international shipping corridors for a large e-commerce company
Source and contributor context
Mahajan, Kriti, Bloebaum, Patrick · Article author
These are credits stated by the source; they do not establish a profile match or authorship of every passage.
Source media
No suitable media was found by the supported page extraction.
Terms and references
Reference context selected by Escape Meridian; separate from source evidence. Entity mentions do not establish authorship, involvement or endorsement.
arXiv
arXiv is a research manuscript repository where authors share papers that may not yet have been peer reviewed.
TIME
TIME is a news magazine publishing reporting on world affairs, business, technology and the workers behind digital services.
Editorial provenance
Version 1. Publication ID: 85250e16-c719-4a5b-8fc9-79cafe604d92.
Prepared by gpt-6-luna; grounding review by gpt-6-luna.
Source check: uncertain by anthropic/claude-opus-5.5 on 2026-11-12T02:01:53.635Z. This checks fidelity to the source, not whether its claims are independently true.
Editorial selection: accept; reasons: material_development.
Observation: 3ba305a55ec74c895d761aec281167d4b781cdbf391a2ff7ff6f66d4c6164717. Source text hash: d922767a165e2fd9743950fc095a3db2f9721de6c7c4a432a152e0be403e4706.
Revision and source-check history
Version 1 · 2026-11-12T02:01:53.635Z
A model for selecting cross-border fulfillment centers
Authors Kriti Mahajan and Patrick Bloebaum introduce a model for choosing which source-country fulfillment centers (FCs) serve international shipping routes. It combines forecasting, doubly robust estimation and linear programming, while treating the domestic network as fixed. The objective balances delivery , logistics cost, profit and shipped units. The authors evaluate the model on three international shipping corridors for a large e-commerce company, using 12 months of shipment data and two forms of offline comparison. They report lower delivery times and logistics costs than human expert-defined selection policies across all three corridors, along with up to 6.5 percentage-point improvements in meeting the 5-day, $5 target. They also report that the model’s Pareto analysis outperforms the specified alternative strategies. These results concern the evaluated corridors and comparisons; the abstract does not establish how the model would perform elsewhere. Escape Meridian interpretation: for operators, the approach offers a way to weigh shipping speed, cost and business objectives when selecting fulfillment centers, rather than relying only on expert-defined policies.
Original source
cs.AI · Article
Source details
Original source date: Nov 10, 2026 (2026-11-10).
Date basis: Date basis not provided.
Added to Escape Meridian: 2026-11-12T02:01:53.635Z. First observed: 2026-11-11T05:06:25.211Z. Retrieved: 2026-11-12T01:49:06.387Z.
Limits
The abstract reports results from three corridors at one large e-commerce company, so it does not establish performance in other companies or settings. The abstract does not name the company or identify the evaluated shipping corridors. The abstract summarizes the estimation and comparison methods but does not provide their detailed procedures or the underlying results.
Open question
Would the reported gains hold on shipping corridors beyond the three evaluated for this large e-commerce company?
Source-stated
The authors present a multi-stage model for selecting source-country fulfillment centers on international shipping routes, combining forecasting, doubly robust estimation and linear programming.
We introduce the cross-border (XB) fulfillment center (FC) Selection Model: a multi-stage optimization framework combining forecasting, doubly robust estimation, and linear programming
Source-stated
The model seeks to balance delivery time and cost with profit and shipped units, with the domestic network held fixed.
minimize delivery time and cost while maximizing profit and shipped units under a fixed domestic network.
Source-stated
The authors evaluate the model on three international shipping corridors for a large e-commerce company, using 12 months of shipment data.
We evaluate the model on three production-scale international shipping corridors for a large e-commerce company using 12 months of shipment data
Source-stated
The authors report lower delivery times and logistics costs than human expert-defined fulfillment-center selection policies across all evaluated corridors.
Across all shipping corridors, the XB FC Selection Model achieves 8.5-51.1% reductions in delivery time and 4.4-48.3% reductions in logistics cost relative to human expert-defined FC selection policies
Source-stated
The authors report improvements of up to 6.5 percentage points in compliance with their 5-day, $5 target.
with up to 6.5 percentage-point improvements in 5/5 target compliance (5 days, $5 USD).
Escape Meridian interpretation
The reported evaluation covers three corridors at one large e-commerce company; whether the results extend to other settings remains untested in the abstract.
three production-scale international shipping corridors for a large e-commerce company
Source and contributor context
Mahajan, Kriti, Bloebaum, Patrick · Article author
These are credits stated by the source; they do not establish a profile match or authorship of every passage.
Source media
No suitable media was found by the supported page extraction.
Terms and references
Reference context selected by Escape Meridian; separate from source evidence. Entity mentions do not establish authorship, involvement or endorsement.
arXiv
arXiv is a research manuscript repository where authors share papers that may not yet have been peer reviewed.
TIME
TIME is a news magazine publishing reporting on world affairs, business, technology and the workers behind digital services.
Editorial provenance
Version 1. Publication ID: 85250e16-c719-4a5b-8fc9-79cafe604d92.
Prepared by gpt-6-luna; grounding review by gpt-6-luna.
Source check: uncertain by anthropic/claude-opus-5.5 on 2026-11-12T02:01:53.635Z. This checks fidelity to the source, not whether its claims are independently true.
Editorial selection: accept; reasons: material_development.
Observation: 3ba305a55ec74c895d761aec281167d4b781cdbf391a2ff7ff6f66d4c6164717. Source text hash: d922767a165e2fd9743950fc095a3db2f9721de6c7c4a432a152e0be403e4706.
uncertain · 2026-11-12T02:01:53.635Z · anthropic/claude-opus-5.5
Publication: 85250e16-c719-4a5b-8fc9-79cafe604d92
attribution — pass: The draft correctly credits Kriti Mahajan and Patrick Bloebaum. It attributes the results to the authors with phrases such as 'They report'. It also keeps the company unnamed, as the source does.
Authors:Kriti Mahajan, Patrick Bloebaum
summary — uncertain: Central terms ('doubly robust estimation', 'linear programming', 'Pareto analysis', 'offline comparison') get no plain-language explanation. A non-specialist cannot tell what the method does; add term-library tooltips. The draft also drops the reported magnitudes (8.5-51.1% time, 4.4-48.3% cost), 'production-scale' and 'statistically significant', which weakens the source's force. The sentence 'the model's Pareto analysis outperforms the specified alternative strategies' is garbled and vague. Smallest repair: 'Pareto analysis shows the model consistently dominates single-objective ranking strategies and unconstrained LP.'
Pareto analysis shows the model consistently dominates single-objective ranking strategies and unconstrained LP on the efficiency-reallocation frontier, with all results statistically significant.
date — pass: originalPublished 2026-11-10 matches the arXiv v1 submission date. It is not the later feed date of 2026-11-11.
[Submitted on 10 Nov 2026]
support — uncertain: Most claims match the abstract. However, the source never says the Pareto analysis itself outperforms anything; it says the analysis shows the model dominating named baselines on an efficiency-reallocation frontier. The draft's wording misplaces the claim and leaves the comparators unnamed. The labeled interpretation for operators is reasonably framed. The generalization question follows from the stated scope.
Pareto analysis shows the model consistently dominates single-objective ranking strategies and unconstrained LP
media — pass: The selected media is the verified direct arXiv abstract page for this paper. It is the most direct access to the source.
Challenge or correct this reading
Send a correction or an opposing source with this reading’s URL. Disagreement and uncertainty can remain unresolved.
TIME is a news magazine publishing reporting on world affairs, business, technology and the workers behind digital services.
Explore TIMEarXiv is a research manuscript repository where authors share papers that may not yet have been peer reviewed.
Explore arXivTIME is a news magazine publishing reporting on world affairs, business, technology and the workers behind digital services.
Explore TIMEarXiv is a research manuscript repository where authors share papers that may not yet have been peer reviewed.
Explore arXiv