Replenishment process of non inventory items in Amazon 3P operations: Airtable integration

Amazon has expanded its global network through the partnership with third parties. A key example is the collaboration with third party groceries (3P) based on a mutual cooperation of capabilities where Amazon provides delivery services and a well-known virtual platform and merchants offers their own experience in the grocery market. The following thesis work aims to illustrate the work done during the 3-month internship at Amazon 3P in Manchester (from 1 May to 31 July). The aim of this paper is to highlight the benefits of creating a scalable and automated non-inventory management process for the growing third party (3P) grocery network across Europe (UK, Italy, Spain, Germany, France) and to present a theoretical proposal for replenishment process. Third party merchants rely on Amazon to supply non-inventory items (packaging) for their daily operations. Currently Merchants report their non-inventory levels to Amazon via Chime (Amazon message platform) rooms or Whatsapp group messages by taking a picture of a manually filled form. Central 3P Ops team (C3PO) will manually check all non-inventory Chime rooms or groups to collect this information, copy this data onto a non-inventory calculator to work out the days of cover before creating orders for supplier replenishment. If counts are not submitted it requires additional time following up with the site or the merchant central ops for an update leaving the store at risk of not being able to maintain operations due to insufficient non-inventory stock levels. The current non-inventory tracking and replenishment process is inefficient and time consuming, furthermore this process is not standardized across the EU with countries using different methods. Having no automated process, centralised tracking or control systems in place in the European 3P network, the existing costs and resource for managing the process are set to increase in line with 3P expansion where new stores will be launched and new Merchant will join the network. Airtable is the tool that will help to automate the non inventory merchant counting feedback process. The platform is based on Tables and views where data, taken from a daily submission forms digitally completed by each store every day, are all stored automatically in the right field. Moreover, it will be possible to create automatic reports received via email by Amazon teams, containing daily counts, missing submissions and any possible shortage. This provides the best views and data for the C3PO team to be able to monitor and replenish stores timely and efficiently.