P Product
Transportation Planning Products
A set of planning and order-creation capabilities developed to make seasonal and promotional execution more consistent, explainable, and scalable.
Type
Product
Core Competency
Product Operations
250+
business partners reached
$256M
realized retail flow governed
$3.1B
enterprise addressable scope
17%
on-time delivery improvement
54+ hrs
manual order-entry cut per cohort
Context or Challenge
Manual planning and order creation created cost, delivery variability, repeated coordination, and inconsistent decision-making across complex seasonal programs.
Observation
Users were relying on workarounds and individual expertise because a standard planning experience did not exist.
Insight
The highest-value opportunity was to understand the decisions users made repeatedly, validate the underlying pain points, and turn that knowledge into a repeatable workflow.
My Thinking
I used user research and voice-of-customer feedback to define the problem, tested an MVP with business partners, refined the workflow through validation, and scaled the solution only after it proved useful.
What I Built or Led
I used human-centered research to define core planning bottlenecks, built and validated an MVP that standardized complex order-creation decisions, and scaled it to over 250 business partners. Once the workflow proved its value in the field, the prototype served as the functional specification and algorithmic blueprint for central engineering to integrate directly into the enterprise purchase order management platform via API. One representative capability, ICC Flow Builder, shows what that standardization looked like in practice.
Featured Capability: ICC Flow Builder
- Replaced manual, all-at-once seasonal purchase-order submission with an automated, lead-time-based 4-wave staggering and truckload optimization model
- Automated the underlying data refresh on a continuous cycle, ensuring routing logic always reflects live lead times rather than static, aging spreadsheets
- Consolidated routing, wave assignment, and export preparation into one rapid browser workflow, cutting order creation from 5+ hours per 30 items down to automated runs
- Reached 30+ daily active users as a self-service planning tool, governing 323 items and $256M in retail flow during initial seasonal cohort adoption
Technology Behind the Tool
- JavaScript
- Python (Flask)
- SQL-based data warehouse integration
- Automated continuous data pipeline
- Greedy, constraint-based scheduling algorithm
- Automated test coverage (unit + end-to-end)
- Enterprise single sign-on
- Containerized cloud deployment
How It Works, Behind the Scenes
In general terms, the tool checks whether a shipment's volume is large enough to fill a truck straight to its destination. If so, it ships direct. If not, the remaining volume is consolidated, grouped into one of four lead-time-based waves, and its order dates are smoothed across several days so volume doesn't spike on any single day. That smoothing step runs on a greedy, constraint-based scheduling algorithm: it sorts shipments by target date and assigns each one to the earliest day that still has capacity, so no single day gets overloaded. An automated data refresh runs continuously in the background, keeping the lead-time and routing data behind these decisions current -- so the logic never depends on a static, aging spreadsheet.
Launch or Adoption Strategy
The rollout began with grassroots validation -- gathering structured feedback from planners and refining the heuristic with live category buys. When the prototype proved it eliminated 54+ hours of manual order-entry per cohort, the business case and algorithmic performance were formally presented to the Vice President of Inventory Flow. This secured executive sponsorship to transition the tool from a standalone aid into an institutional platform capability: central engineering completed the API integration into the enterprise purchase order management platform ahead of the critical Q4 holiday code freeze.
Business Impact
- Field adoption & partner trust: Reached 250+ business partners and sustained 30+ daily active planners
- Realized early adoption (Q4 cohort sample): 323 items and $256M in retail flow governed with zero flow disruptions
- Direct labor savings: Eliminated 54+ hours of manual purchase-order creation across initial user cohorts, replacing 5+ hours of manual work per 30-item buy with instantaneous runs
- Logistics performance: 17% improvement in on-time delivery across synchronized destination distribution center arrivals
- Executive sponsorship: Strategic roadmap and operational ROI presented to the VP of Inventory Flow
- Enterprise platform scale: API integration into the enterprise purchase order management platform ahead of the holiday freeze, unlocking an addressable scope of 11M orders and $3.1B in received retail across domestic business units
Key Takeaway
“Strong products often begin by standardizing a decision that users are already trying to make through manual workarounds.”
Capabilities Demonstrated
- Voice of customer
- MVP validation
- Product operations
- Workflow automation
- Requirements definition
- Adoption
- Product transition
- Risk mitigation
- Operational transformation
- Full-stack tool direction
- Cross-functional partnership with engineering