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Matthew Zalesak
Matthew Zalesak

Matthew Zalesak

Senior Operations Research Scientist
Wayfair
Bio

Matthew Zalesak is a Senior Operations Research Scientist at Wayfair where he has spent the past four years working on optimization applications in transportation planning, supply chain network management, and inventory positioning.  At Wayfair he has focused on applying advanced optimization techniques to solve the continually evolving challenges of e-commerce at scale.  He has a strong background in developing fast-running optimization solutions using modeling and algorithmic heuristics and other techniques to fit the needs of interactive planning.  Matthew holds a PhD in Operations Research from Cornell University where he studied routing algorithms for real-time operation of high-capacity ride pooling systems.


The Benefits of Lightweight Algorithms - How Local Search and Simulation Transformed Inventory Positioning at Wayfair

Wayfair’s proprietary CastleGate fulfillment network enables our 20 thousand suppliers to forward-position their inventory closer to 21 million customers, allowing faster delivery and lower fulfillment cost. With the network serving up to 25% of Wayfair’s $12 billion in annual revenue, it is critical to have an inventory positioning system that can maximize delivery speed while minimizing end-to-end supply chain costs. Wayfair’s previous positioning system relied on a mathematical programming approach. While it provided an easy modeling framework paired with off-the-shelf commercial solvers and reliably generated high quality decisions, the model could be slow, scaled poorly, and sometimes created solutions that were difficult to explain to users.

We present our new system which is based on a simulation and local-search powered heuristic. By exploiting the problem structure, it generates decisions up to two orders of magnitude faster without sacrificing solution quality. This ability to solve many iterations of the problem quickly unlocks new business opportunities such as real-time interactive planning and real-time integration with other company systems in addition to being truly scalable and making it easy to handle complex constraints and objectives.

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