Research examining how e-commerce warehouses adapt to demand fluctuations has been published in the Journal of Operations Management. The study, authored by Professor William Li, SAIF Chair Professor of Management, and his collaborators Kedong Chen, Hung‐Chung Su, and Kevin Linderman, reveals how informal coordination mechanisms enable warehouses to manage inventory at critical distribution points.
The paper, titled “Last-minute coordination: Adapting to demand to support last-mile operations,” challenges conventional wisdom by demonstrating that structured systems—contracts and inventory management protocols—prove insufficient when warehouses face unexpected local contingencies. Instead, facilities rely on ad hoc, last-minute coordination with peer warehouses to adjust inventory levels. The research finds that while coordinating with numerous facilities reduces individual warehouse efficiency, a centralized coordination structure enhances network-wide performance. Notably, demand uncertainty reinforces rather than disrupts these informal patterns.
Professor Li joined SAIF in 2018 after holding the Eric Jing Professorship at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management. His research spans industrial statistics, business analytics, and financial technology. He has published nearly forty papers in leading journals including INFORMS Journal on Computing and the Journal of the American Statistical Association, and co-authored the widely cited textbook Applying Linear Statistical Models. A Fellow of the American Statistical Association since 2013, he has received multiple teaching awards at both Minnesota and Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
