Patent attributes
A system and associated methods for apportioning inventory units between a plurality of warehouse nodes operated by third parties in order to meet desired service levels are provided. In some embodiments, the method includes receiving a placement request for a set of inventory units from a merchant, the placement request including desired service levels for shipment of product to customers. The method includes accessing a database storing a plurality of node data sets, each node data set being associated with a warehouse node. Based on the node data sets and the placement request, a set of warehouse nodes for storing the inventory units is selected and a number of inventory units is apportioned to each selected warehouse node. The method also includes providing placement instructions including the selected warehouse nodes and the number of inventory units to ship to each selected warehouse node.