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[System Design] Part 4 — Amazon CONDOR & Anticipatory Shipping
Tuấn Anh · 2026-06-18 · via DEV Community
Cover image for [System Design] Part 4 — Amazon CONDOR & Anticipatory Shipping

Tuấn Anh

Amazon Fulfillment: The Three Tiers of Optimization

Amazon processes billions of orders annually through a network of over 175 fulfillment centers globally. To maintain their 1-2 day (or same-day) delivery guarantees, they built a 3-tier optimization architecture:

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  TIER 1: ANTICIPATORY SHIPPING (Long-term — weeks/months)  │
│  → ML predicts demand → Moves inventory close to customers │
│     BEFORE they place an order                             │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  TIER 2: REGIONALIZATION (Medium-term — days/weeks)        │
│  → Partitions the fulfillment network into autonomous zones│
│  → Ensures 70-80% of orders are fulfilled intra-region     │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  TIER 3: CONDOR (Short-term — hours)                       │
│  → Continuously re-optimizes the fulfillment plan within   │
│     a 5-6 hour window before pick-and-pack begins.         │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘


Anticipatory Shipping — Shipping Before You Buy

A Crazy but Effective Idea

Amazon holds a patent (US Patent 8,615,473) describing a system that begins shipping items BEFORE a customer places an order. It sounds like science fiction, but it's a reality.

Traditional Model:
  Customer orders → Warehouse processes → Ships → Delivered (2-5 days)

Anticipatory Shipping:
  ML predicts: "Customers in Region X will buy 200 iPhone 16s in the next 3 days"
  → Amazon ships 200 iPhones from a central hub to local delivery hubs in Region X
  → Customer places order → The item is already locally staged → Delivered same-day!

ML Model Input Features

Input Feature Significance
Purchase history What do they buy, and how often?
Browsing behavior What are they looking at? Cart abandonment?
Wishlists Explicitly desired items
Seasonal patterns Winter coats in November, sunscreen in June
Regional demographics High-income areas? Young families? College towns?
Trending products Items going viral on social media
Weather forecast Rain forecasted → move umbrellas to local hubs
Events calendar Black Friday, Prime Day, major sports events

Late-Select Addressing — The Key Technique

The Anticipatory Flow:

1. ML Model: "Zip code 10001 (NY) has an 87% probability of ordering 200 cases of water in the next 3 days."

2. System: Ships 200 cases from the Midwest Central Hub → NY Local Hub.
   These packages DO NOT HAVE A SPECIFIC CUSTOMER ADDRESS YET → They are just labeled "Destination: NY Hub".

3. Customer A in NY orders 2 cases of water:
   → The system assigns an address to 2 of the pre-staged cases at the NY Hub.
   → Delivered in 2 hours!

4. If predictions are slightly off (e.g., 50 cases remain unsold):
   → Amazon might run a targeted flash sale for that zip code.
   → Or re-route them back to the central hub.


CONDOR — Customer Order and Network Density OptimizeR

The Problem CONDOR Solves

When you place an order, Amazon doesn't process it immediately. There is a 5-6 hour window between the order being placed and the warehouse actually starting the pick-and-pack process. CONDOR exploits this window to optimize delivery routes.

17:00 — Order A is placed in Zone 1
  → CONDOR Plan v1: Ship from WH Alpha, individual truck.

17:15 — Order B is placed in Zone 1 (near Order A)
  → CONDOR Plan v2: Consolidate A+B onto the same route → saves 1 truck trip.

17:30 — Order C is placed in Zone 2 (along the same route)
  → CONDOR Plan v3: Consolidate A+B+C → highly dense, efficient route.

17:45 — Order D is placed in Zone 9 (opposite direction)
  → CONDOR Plan v4: Route 1 (A+B+C) + Route 2 (D only).

→ Every 15 minutes, CONDOR re-evaluates the entire network to find better plans.
→ Deadline: When the window closes (e.g., 23:00), the warehouse executes the final optimized plan.

The CONDOR Algorithm

CONDOR solves a variation of the Prize Collecting Vehicle Routing Problem (PCVRP), which is vastly more complex than standard VRP:

PCVRP:
  Maximize: Total "prize" (value of orders delivered on time)
  Minimize: Total transportation cost
  Subject to:
    - Capacity constraints (vehicle limits)
    - Time windows (delivery SLAs)
    - Fleet size limits
    - Network density bonuses: bundling orders in the same neighborhood significantly reduces cost-per-package.

Solving Techniques:
  1. Mathematical optimization (LP/MIP relaxation)
  2. Local search heuristics (2-opt, 3-opt swaps between routes)
  3. Iterative re-optimization (running the solver continuously as new data arrives)

The Major Breakthrough

Amazon has stated that CONDOR reduces the number of feasible routing decisions for a given area from millions to under 10 viable options, transforming an NP-hard problem into something solvable in near real-time.


Regionalization — Partitioning the Network

Prior to 2022, if a customer in New York ordered an item, it might have shipped from a warehouse in California (3,000 miles away) if the local warehouse was out of stock. This was incredibly inefficient.

Amazon restructured its US network into 8 autonomous regions:

Pre-Regionalization:
  Customer in NY → Order fulfilled from CA (3,000 miles) → 3-5 day delivery.

Post-Regionalization:
  Customer in NY → Order fulfilled from NJ or PA (100 miles) → Same/Next day delivery.

Results:
  - Average travel distance per package dropped by ~60%
  - Significant reduction in shipping costs
  - Delivery times dropped by 1-2 days
  - Massive reduction in carbon footprint

Regional Inventory Strategy

SKU "IPHONE-16-256GB":
  National Demand: 100,000/month

  Northeast Region (NY, NJ, PA):  25,000/mo → Stock 30,000
  West Region (CA, WA, OR):       20,000/mo → Stock 25,000
  South Region (TX, FL, GA):      18,000/mo → Stock 22,000
  ...

  Buffer: 22,000 kept at a central cross-dock facility for overflow/rebalancing.


Comparing Amazon vs. eBay vs. Regional Marketplaces

Aspect Amazon eBay Regional Marketplaces
Model 1P + FBA (Owns warehouses) Marketplace (Sellers ship) Marketplace + Fulfillment (e.g., Shopee)
Facilities 175+ Global FCs Seller warehouses + 3PLs Regional fulfillment hubs
Allocation CONDOR (Global/Continuous optimization) Rule-based (Seller-defined) Regional matching engines
Anticipatory Yes (Late-Select Addressing) No No
Structure 8 Autonomous Regions (US) Decentralized Geographic partitioning

Lessons Learned for System Design

You don't need to build CONDOR to apply its principles:

  1. Batch processing over real-time: Don't dispatch an order the second it arrives. Hold it in a 15-30 minute batch window and optimize the entire batch together. It is always mathematically superior.
  2. Re-optimization: The best route at 17:00 may be terrible by 17:30 as new orders arrive. Run iterative optimizations.
  3. Predictive placement: If data shows consistent regional demand, stage the inventory there beforehand.
  4. Partitioning: Break massive NP-hard routing problems into smaller regional chunks to make them solvable.

Next, we explore split shipments, consolidation, and the last-mile delivery problem—which accounts for 53% of all logistics costs. Read Part 5 — Split Shipment, Consolidation & Last-Mile Delivery.


References & Further Reading


This post was originally published on my blog at Part 4 — Amazon CONDOR & Anticipatory Shipping.

Hi, I'm Lê Tuấn Anh (vesviet) 👋
I am a Senior Go Backend Architect & Distributed Systems Engineer with 17+ years of experience building high-traffic platforms (25M+ requests/month).
If you enjoyed this deep-dive, let's connect on LinkedIn or explore my consulting services at tanhdev.com/hire.