> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://abundance.alloconomy.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # One Order, Several Plans - URL: https://abundance.alloconomy.com/alloconomy/outbound-one-order-several-plans/ - Published: 2026-10-19T07:31:10.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-22T22:23:17.000Z - Description: The cheapest plan is late; the fewest parcels are late too. Build an order plan that fits stock, capacity, and the promise. - Author: Sathya Narayanan - Tags: Alloconomy, Supply Chain, From Click to Doorstep, #series-detail, #Import 2026-10-18 23:22 Supply Chain · Sixteen essays From Click to Doorstep Complete reading path · You are in Part 6 of 16 1. Part 1 [From Click to Doorstep: How a Delivery Promise Becomes Real](https://abundance.alloconomy.com/alloconomy/from-click-to-doorstep/)The full outbound journey, the cast, the cheat sheet, and the decisions behind the promise. 2. Part 2 [A Network Is More Than a Map](https://abundance.alloconomy.com/alloconomy/outbound-a-network-is-more-than-a-map/)Facility roles, regional design, pooling, and the difference between distance and service. 3. Part 3 [Before the Order: Which Books Belong Nearby?](https://abundance.alloconomy.com/alloconomy/outbound-before-the-order/)Demand distributions, local assortment, placement, and the economic meaning of a forecast. 4. Part 4 [Stock Is an Option with a Location and a Clock](https://abundance.alloconomy.com/alloconomy/outbound-stock-is-an-option/)Inventory conservation, multi-echelon replenishment, eligibility, ownership, and reservations. 5. Part 5 [A Promise Is a Path Through Time](https://abundance.alloconomy.com/alloconomy/outbound-a-promise-is-a-path/)Checkout offers, accepted commitments, joint reliability, and backward scheduling. 6. Part 6 **One Order, Several Plans**Current essayCandidate shipments, exact coverage, shared constraints, consolidation, and visible priorities. 7. Part 7 [The Queue After the Robot](https://abundance.alloconomy.com/alloconomy/outbound-the-queue-after-the-robot/)Work-mix capacity, bottlenecks, queues, staging, robotics, and release deadlines. 8. Part 8 [The Truck That Left Five Minutes Ago](https://abundance.alloconomy.com/alloconomy/outbound-the-truck-that-left/)Middle-mile connections, whole-truck economics, load constraints, and missed departures. 9. Part 9 [The Last Mile Has More Than Miles](https://abundance.alloconomy.com/alloconomy/outbound-the-last-mile/)Channel choice, routes, drivers, vehicles, charging, customer access, and readiness. 10. Part 10 [Why Preserve the Last Nearby Book?](https://abundance.alloconomy.com/alloconomy/outbound-the-last-nearby-book/)A worked opportunity-cost decision, its probability threshold, and the assumptions that reverse it. 11. Part 11 [When the Plan Breaks, What Can Still Change?](https://abundance.alloconomy.com/alloconomy/outbound-when-the-plan-breaks/)Timed recovery, reservation replacement, freeze points, and keeping the original promise visible. 12. Part 12 [Models That Respect Reality](https://abundance.alloconomy.com/alloconomy/outbound-models-that-respect-reality/)Forecasting, optimization, stateful simulation, tail risk, shared events, and controlled execution. 13. Part 13 [The Business Models the Network Makes Possible](https://abundance.alloconomy.com/alloconomy/outbound-the-business-models/)Multichannel fulfillment, omnichannel service, cross-border choices, and their operating contracts. 14. Part 14 [The Journey Back: Returns, Safety, and Resilience](https://abundance.alloconomy.com/alloconomy/outbound-the-journey-back/)Reverse logistics, condition, product suitability, worker safety, and the cost of recovery. 15. Part 15 [Did We Really Save Money?](https://abundance.alloconomy.com/alloconomy/outbound-did-we-really-save/)Marginal, opportunity, and allocated costs; reconciliation, denominators, and causal evidence. 16. Part 16 [Follow the Book Home: A Leader’s Review](https://abundance.alloconomy.com/alloconomy/outbound-follow-the-book-home/)The connected book-and-workbook case, the three-series bridge, and a practical leadership review. **Illustrative examples. Public sources. Personal views.** I am Sathya Narayanan, writing in a personal capacity as I learn in public. The views, interpretations and teaching models are my own; they do not represent my employer or any other organization and carry no employer approval or endorsement. No confidential, proprietary or nonpublic employer information is used. Factual background comes only from publicly available sources. Maya of Stories Inc, the book vendor; Mayan of Sapiens Inc, the printing-machine supplier; and eComm Inc, the ecommerce company, are fictional teaching characters and companies. I appear as the customer in imagined scenes, not as a report of my actual purchases. These scenes do not describe any real company or its internal systems. The cases are separate teaching examples, not one continuous ledger. Scenario amounts, rates, terms and policies are illustrative assumptions unless expressly identified as dated public facts. Actual contracts, regulations, operations and economics require case-by-case analysis. **Visual guide: the steps and the records they create** [Open the customer fulfillment graph and quick definitions →](https://abundance.alloconomy.com/alloconomy/from-click-to-doorstep/#customer-fulfillment-construct-map) See the industry names for sales order, fulfillment order, wave, picking, parcel and return, with the steps that create or update each record. Companion maps: [Buying and selling](https://abundance.alloconomy.com/alloconomy/behind-the-buy-button/#buyer-seller-construct-map) · [Inbound receiving](https://abundance.alloconomy.com/alloconomy/before-the-shelf/#buyer-seller-construct-map) I order three of Maya's titles: X, Y, and Z. Three parcels look wasteful; one looks efficient. But the single parcel may need a transfer that misses my deadline. Even the cheapest source for each title can overload the same departure. **Assignment** turns a menu of possible shipments into one executable plan. Every requested unit must be served exactly once, the selected shipments must fit together, and the complete order must meet its promise. The smallest price in the list is only a candidate. ## A candidate is a complete proposal A useful candidate specifies the units, eligible source inventory, package, processing path, transport timing, and delivery feasibility. It includes its resource footprint and cost. Until selected and committed, it is an option, not an actual shipment. Our invented example has these five ways to cover the whole order. All prices are incremental physical fulfillment costs through delivery; they are additive by construction. Any shared-stop effect is already included. | Complete plan | Cost | Parcels | West departure slots | Result | | --------------------------------- | ----- | ------- | -------------------- | ------------------------------------- | | X from A, Y from A, Z from B | $6.00 | 3 | 3 | Too many West slots | | X and Y together from A; Z from B | $5.00 | 2 | 2 | Feasible | | X and Z together from B; Y from A | $5.20 | 2 | 2 | Feasible | | Y and Z together from C; X from A | $5.50 | 2 | 1 | Feasible using one separate East slot | | All together after a transfer | $2.50 | 1 | 0 | Late | There are two West slots and one East slot. Other capacities are nonbinding. The best feasible listed plan costs $5.00\. With only one West slot, it changes to $5.50\. If the East slot also disappears, no listed on-time plan works. ![Five ways to cover titles X, Y, and Z show cost, parcels, departure slots, and feasibility. The $5 plan fits two West slots; the $2.50 combined plan arrives late.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/f5/a9/f5a9f801-5a10-44d6-b07c-6658660be1a9/content/images/from-click-to-doorstep/figures/part-06.png) With two West slots and one East slot, $5 is the cheapest feasible listed plan. Remove one West slot and the answer changes to $5.50; remove East as well and none of the listed plans works. Original teaching diagram with invented inputs; actual operations require case-by-case analysis. [View the full-size diagram →](https://storage.ghost.io/c/f5/a9/f5a9f801-5a10-44d6-b07c-6658660be1a9/content/images/from-click-to-doorstep/figures/part-06.png?ref=abundance.alloconomy.com) The cheapest plan is late. The plan with the fewest parcels is late. Choosing the cheapest single-title option exceeds departure capacity. These rules each miss part of the actual decision. ## Exact coverage and shared constraints In mathematical language, we select candidates so that **the number of selected candidates containing each requested unit equals one**. This is an exact-cover condition. “At least one” would allow duplicate fulfillment. Two copies of the same title need two units represented, even if their product identifier is identical. Then add stock and timed-capacity constraints. Individual feasibility is insufficient: two individually valid candidates can both consume the last available departure slot. Concurrent orders need a reliable reservation mechanism for the same reason. A solver can be exact within the candidate set and still miss a better physical plan that was never generated. For three distinct units there are seven nonempty subsets before considering locations and times; for ten there are 1,023\. Practical systems need controlled search, good candidate generation, and useful fallbacks. ## Make priorities visible If the promise is a hard requirement, remove late plans before comparing cost. If no compliant plan exists, enter an explicit exception process. A weighted score can silently change that policy. For example, the late combined plan saves $2.50 against the $5.00 on-time choice and makes three units late. Under a score of cost plus a penalty per late unit, the on-time choice wins only when the penalty exceeds **$2.50 ÷ 3**, or about $0.8333 per late unit. That is a property of this toy calculation, not an acceptable customer-compensation rule. Leaders can instead set an explicit hierarchy: satisfy required service and eligibility, minimize cost, then consider package count within a declared cost allowance. Safety is never a tradable inconvenience in this hierarchy. ### A frontier makes the tradeoff inspectable Consider three separate feasible outcomes: $8 with three packages, $10 with two, and $11 with one. None improves both cost and package count over another; all are Pareto efficient. Yet a score of cost plus a positive weight per package cannot select the middle choice. It needs a weight of at least $2 to beat the first and at most $1 to beat the last. An explicit $10 budget followed by minimizing packages does select it. In discrete decisions, one weighted score can hide a reasonable compromise. State the constraints or show the frontier. ## Consolidation can happen at different levels Combining units into one parcel differs from grouping multiple parcels onto one stop or route. Requiring one box can force transfers and waiting. Two boxes arriving together may still share a visit. Public delivery-grouping research illustrates the connection between upstream choices and downstream route density. [S5](https://www.amazon.science/latest-news/the-science-behind-grouping-amazon-package-deliveries?ref=abundance.alloconomy.com) Maya should ask how packaging and product compatibility affect candidate options. The network leader should inspect missing alternatives, rejected constraints, and failed reservations separately. An investor should ask whether fewer parcels reduced physical expense, merely moved work, or slowed the service. **Try the idea:** when West capacity falls, should the system simply pick the previously second-cheapest plan? No. The $5.20 alternative also needs two West slots. Reevaluate feasibility before ranking. ## Public sources and evidence boundaries The calculations and operating scenes above are fictional teaching models. These public references support the limited background claims identified in the text. Checked 18 October 2026. - [S5: The science behind grouping package deliveries](https://www.amazon.science/latest-news/the-science-behind-grouping-amazon-package-deliveries?ref=abundance.alloconomy.com) (2022-08-24). Dated account of upstream/downstream grouping. No reproduced universal savings claim. --- [Previous: A Promise Is a Path Through Time](https://abundance.alloconomy.com/alloconomy/outbound-a-promise-is-a-path/) · [Next: The Queue After the Robot](https://abundance.alloconomy.com/alloconomy/outbound-the-queue-after-the-robot/) · [Return to the opening guide](https://abundance.alloconomy.com/alloconomy/from-click-to-doorstep/)