Setting Goals and Constraints

Configure fulfillment goals and constraints at the account level to guide how fabric’s real-time testing engine generates optimized routing strategies.

These settings form the foundation of Smart Order Routing. By defining what’s most important to your business, whether that’s minimizing split shipments, reducing cost, or speeding up delivery, your goals and constraints guide how fabric’s AI evaluates fulfillment options and recommends intelligent routing rules that align with your operational priorities.

Once saved, these settings create the foundation for fabric’s recommendations that will adapt to your business needs over time.

You can return to the Goals and Constraints page at any time to modify your selections as your business needs change.

Fulfillment goals

Your goals define the fulfillment outcomes that matter most to your business. fabric uses them to prioritize trade-offs when recommending routing strategies.

Select three goals to guide how fulfillment performance is measured and optimized.

Goal	Description
Split Shipment Rate	The percentage of orders that require multiple shipments. Lower values reduce shipping costs and improve customer experience.
Fulfillment Distance	The average distance (in miles or kilometers) your deliveries travel. Shorter distances can reduce cost and delivery times.
Fulfillment Cost	The average shipping or delivery cost per order. Lower fulfillment costs increase profitability.
Average Shipment Over SLA	The percentage of shipments that miss their promised delivery date. Lowering this improves on-time delivery performance.
Average Fulfillment Time	The average time from when an order is placed to when it’s delivered. Faster fulfillment enhances customer satisfaction.
Cancellation Rate	The percentage of orders canceled due to inventory or routing issues. Reducing this helps retain revenue and trust.

Fulfillment constraints

Constraints represent the operational limits your business needs to observe, such as inventory buffers, fulfillment zones, or maximum splits. fabric applies these rules when generating fulfillment recommendations.

Constraint	Description
Geographic Boundary	Limits fulfillment to a defined region, territory, or zone.
Minimum Safety Stock	Ensures a specified amount of inventory is held back and not used for fulfillment.
Max Fulfillment Locations	Limits the number of locations that can be used to fulfill a single order.
Priority Locations	Prioritizes certain fulfillment centers or warehouses over others during routing decisions.
Included Inventory Networks	Limits fulfillment to specific inventory networks you’ve chosen to include.
Order Level Split Shipments	Allows or prevents whether a single order can be split and fulfilled from multiple locations.
Item Level Split Shipments	Allows or prevents whether an item’s total quantity can be split and fulfilled from different locations to complete the order.
Maximum Splits Allowed per Order	Sets a hard limit on the number of times an order can be split during fulfillment.
Shipping Zone Boundary (miles)	Restricts fulfillment to a defined geographic radius from the customer or fulfillment node.
Allows Partial Fulfillment	Determines whether an order can be partially fulfilled when some items are unavailable.
Use Capacity	Considers location capacity limits when routing orders.
Exclude Locations in Outage	Prevents fulfillment from any warehouse or node currently experiencing an outage.

Procedure

1. In the left menu, click Account Settings.

   The Account Settings page is displayed.

2. Click Goals and Constraints.

   The Goals and Constraints page is displayed.

3. In the Goals menu, select your top three goals.

4. In the Constraint Type menu, click Add Constraint.

5. In the Constraint Type field, select a constraint.

6. Based on the constraint selected in Step 5, a field will appear with the appropriate input (for example, miles for geographic boundary or quantity for safety stock). Enter the required value.

7. (Optional) To add another constraint, click Add Constraint and repeat steps 4 through 6.

8. Click Save.

Monitor the impact of fabric AI’s smart order routing rules in the Smart Order Routing dashboard, where fulfillment performance is tracked and visualized in real time.