On average, ecommerce companies with multiple fulfillment nodes will see between 2%-5% of their orders be split shipments. Sometimes splits are good for customer experience and margins. Usually they are bad.

At a smaller scale, it's not a big deal. Furthermore, with only one FC, you will never have splits! And even with two FCs, the need for splits will be rare. But the jump to three FCs and beyond means the decisions around splits becomes too complex to manage. Coupled with the volume of orders at this stage, and the costs could be too much to bear as well.

It's at this point where a concentrated effort to minimize and manage split shipments becomes a true needle mover.

The goal of the program is simple: Reduce the occurrence of split shipments by a few percentage points. The way to get there is extremely complex, however. The solution typically includes stochastic modeling of inventory placement to optimize first allocation efforts, future inventory level forecasting (done in real-time at the moment of order fulfillment!), and an analysis of shipping costs for the given order in question.