Using Optimization and LLMs to Enhance Cloud Supply Chain Operations

The cloud computing industry amounts to hundreds of billions of dollars in market size. In this talk, we give an overview of the challenges in sustaining cost-effective operations for Microsoft’s cloud business, ranging from handling supply chain dependencies to multi-dimensional resource management under demand uncertainty. We describe our optimization solution to the server fulfillment problem, which deals with reliably shipping servers from warehouses to datacenters. We then highlight how we have been using large language models (LLMs) to explain the outcomes of that solver to supply chain planners and improve productivity. We conclude by describing future research directions in cloud operations management, and, more broadly, in the intersection of AI and optimization as part of the OptiGuide project.

Date:
Speakers:
Beibin Li, Konstantina Mellou, Ishai Menache, Jeevan Pathuri, Bo Zhang

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