Maplebear Inc.

Yile Liu

Houtao Deng

Ji Chen

Yijia Chen

Christopher Shey-Tau Sun

An online concierge system maintains a data store with discrete time intervals for fulfilling orders and information on shoppers categorized in a tree structure based on their characteristics. When an order is received from a user's client device, the system employs a machine learning model trained on historical data to estimate the number of available shoppers and their corresponding levels in the tree structure. The order is tagged based on the items it contains, and these tags are matched to the levels of capable shoppers. Shoppers are grouped and scored based on their levels, and a group with the minimum score and capability to fulfill the order is selected. A shopper from this group is then dispatched for order fulfillment, leading to a decrement in the estimated number of shoppers in the selected group. This approach optimizes the allocation of shoppers to orders, ensuring efficient and timely fulfillment.

Allocating shoppers for order fulfillment by an online concierge system accounting for variable numbers of shoppers across different time windows and varying capabilities for fulfilling orders

An online concierge system allows users to order items within discrete time intervals later than a time when an order was received. Each order may require a different set of characteristics for fulfilment by shoppers. Because different shoppers may have different capabilities, it is most efficient to reserve shoppers with specialized characteristics for orders that require them. The online concierge system maintains a set of hierarchical structures for different characteristics of shoppers, with each level in a hierarchical structure having a value. To select a shopper to fulfill an order, the online concierge system scores identifies groups of shoppers having characteristics capable of fulfilling the order based on levels in the hierarchical structure for each characteristic of a group. A shopper from a group having a minimum score is selected to fulfill the order.

Growing community of inventors

Sunnyvale, CA, United States of America

Yile Liu