Delivery Date Prediction and Management

Shopify has evolved its capabilities for predicting and managing delivery dates for merchants and buyers. Initial efforts focused on building a platform for third-party logistics (3PL) providers to upload their pre-computed delivery dates. This involved creating new GraphQL APIs for 3PLs to integrate with the core Shopify platform and displaying these dates on product detail pages and at checkout. The Shopify Fulfillment Network (SFN) team developed a system to calculate and upload SFN delivery dates to the core platform, considering network, carrier, and product data. This post details the factors influencing delivery dates (proximity, goods type, fulfillment center time, carrier time) and the strategy of producing multiple schedules shared across merchant SKUs. The system allows for real-time lookups of pre-computed delivery dates, which are then used during order fulfillment to ensure timely delivery.