A Patent for optimal and sustainable mail transit efficiency and customers’experience in the postal/express delivery
A corporate core competence is the capability that ensures the company’s advantage in the marketplace for the long run. The postal/express delivery companies that serve their customers by mailing/delivering parcels or letter should pay much attention to the two core competences - transit efficiency and customers’ experience.
Invention of "METHOD AND DEVICE FOR DETERMINING MAIL PATH INFORMATION" has been granted patent in China, US, Japan, Korea, Eurasia, Australia, Canada, Mexico and Indonesia. The same invention is also applied (PCT/CN2013/074342) for patent in Brazil, India and other main regions across the globe. This international patent makes use of the mobile phone through GPS to locate mail senders and recipients in their latitude and the longitude coordinates. The technology of the patent can calculate information containing the mail collector (courier who picks up a parcel or letter at the sender’s point), the distributor (courier who delivers the mail at the recipient’s point) and all the transit/sorting points (same as "collector-distributor" in the PCT application document) between the sender and the recipient which forms a transit/sorting path for the whole mailing process when the sender submits the mailing waybill at the very beginning. This could bring the quality and the efficiency to a digital revolution of "Internet+" in the postal/express delivery sector and, further, the optimality and the sustainability in terms of the transit efficiency and the customers’ experience for all the postal/express delivery enterprises.
The technology of the mobile internet has been applied from many aspects in the daily life now. It is fast and easy to obtain location information through the smart mobile phone. In mailing a parcel or a letter, a customer may like to know the following things in advance. How to get the mail collector’s contact information? When is the collector coming to pick up the mail? How much does the mailing cost? How long does it take for the mail’s arrival at the destination? Whether can the location of the mail be tracked at anytime during the mailing? What is the mail distributor’s contact information? When can the recipient expect the distributor’s delivery? All those are what mainly contribute to the customers’ experience. Under what circumstances can a postal/express delivery company provide such customer’s experience?
People with experience of online shopping know that a package reaches the recipient from the sender going through a process of mail collection, transit, sorting and distribution, after transiting for a few transit points. It is the transit sorting that makes the difference of the postal/express delivery from the logistic business. The transit sorting is to classify every mail correctly into the next transit point. That’s why being able to precisely determine the transit points of the mail sorting path when the sender’s mailing order is made at beginning is the key to accomplish not only the efficiency optimized in transit sorting but also the customers’ experience mentioned above.
However, the conventional way needs to fill in very long information including the addresses and the postal codes which can be done neither quickly nor accurately. For instance, the automatic technology of UPS and FedEx, in giants in the business, uses the integrated addresses to describe the ranges of all the transit points. Due to change of addresses or re-assignment for the work ranges, it confounds the determination of the ranges corresponding to the addresses. Consequently, manpower has to be adopted in the mail sorting and the mailing path can’t be correctly calculated at time the sender submits the mailing waybill. In addition to the mail transit and sorting, the method relying on addresses also constrains the efficiency of the mail collection and the distribution both at the sending and the destination points, respectively. The express delivery is a door-to-door service. The couriers at the sending and the destination points need to memorize a lot of names of the streets and buildings. Or they can’t find the recipients’ locations. Also as the distributor at the destination point delivers more than a hundred of mails per day, the conventional method can only calculate the best delivery route based on information from the Geographic Information System (GIS) containing names of streets, traffic condition and the latitude and longitude coordinates of quite a few targeted locations. But, not all addresses can be converted to their latitude and longitude coordinates due to many reasons in practice. Therefore, by analyzing the big data of the mail delivery routes tracked by GPS over the years UPS creates a route optimization system, ORION. The system is planned to be implemented across the US by the end of 2016, which would bring a reduction of 100 million miles on the road, 10 million gallons in fuel, US$300 million in cost and 100 thousand tons of Carbon dioxide emission.
In October, 2016, a poster of “2016 - 2018” for the 47th World Postal Day illustrated the three strategies of Innovation, Integration and Inclusion from the Universal Postal Union, which is the main impulse for what the Universal Postal Union advocates for the future industrial development. Bishar also indicated that the future will be determined by the ability of quick adjustment and creativeness. The postal industry must make change itself to meet the customers’ expectation, need and taste in change.
In China. data from the national postal bureau reveals that the total number of mails or parcels delivered by the express delivery service in 2017 is 40.1 billion, ranked the No. 1 in the world; "A few points in promoting the development of the express delivery service" from the State Council estimates the total volume would reach 50 billion by the end of 2020. Solution of "Internet +" is the most desirable.
In contrast with addresses, the system of latitude and longitude is more precise and constant in identifying a location on the earth. There is no ambiguity or outdatedness. Latitude and longitude coordinates can also be used to stand for a range of assignments in the express delivery on an electronic map for instance. It is the computer that has the advantage to calculate and identify to which range a pair of the coordinates belong. Only when a mail has its latitude and longitude coordinates, the target indicator from the geographic information system and the smart technology for path planning can be applied to the express delivery sector.
Anyone who has the experience using the electronic map would find that not all locations can be identified by addresses. That means that not all addresses for streets, buildings or residential apartments can be converted to their latitude and longitude coordinates. The methodology from the patent hopes that customers bypass the method of addresses and directly provide with latitude and longitude coordinates for any location on the earth. Only in this way the desired technical results can be achieved. How do the senders and the recipients then obtain their latitude and longitude coordinates at anytime and anywhere? As a matter of fact, the location sharing has been widely used in Didi, Uber and WeChat for instance. So it is very simple to gain latitude and longitude coordinates using the GPS through an APP of smart mobile phone.
The technology of the patent makes "Internet + Express Delivery" come true by adopting latitude and longitude coordinates over the conventional way using the addresses. The most optimal way is the following. An express delivery company predefines on an electronic map all the assigned work ranges for the couriers and their corresponding routing scheme established by individual company. Combining these two types of information creates a “super transit code” in which the ranges are represented by their boundaries in terms of the latitude and longitude coordinates. Now every time when a mail needs to be delivered, the sender and the recipient use a mobile phone APP to fill in information of their latitude and longitude coordinates and their phone numbers (the phone information is more for the convenience to convey the latitude and longitude coordinates which are both hard to be written and remembered between the mail sender and the recipient). With the aid of the three types of information, the mail locations expressed in latitude and longitude, the work ranges and the routing schemes which differ from the conventional way, it follow that the coordinates corresponding to the specific sender and recipient determine the specific work ranges of the collector and the distributor, and then two “super transit code”. Making use of the two “super transit code” gives the transit path of the mail from the sender to the recipient. Note that the work ranges and the couriers have 1 to 1 correspondence. That is why the information of the collector, the distributor and the transit points between the sender and recipient will be produced as soon as the sender hands over the delivering order. Therefore, by using the information of the regular mail bar code against the one of the mail transit path along with the latitude and the longitude coordinates for the sender and the recipient, the methodology and the technology of the patent optimally improve the efficiency in the whole process of mail collection, transit, sorting and distribution, which raise the customers’ experience on all aspects discussed in the early paragraph.
Now let’s see how the mailing efficiency is optimized.
Mail collection – automatically connects to the mail collector at sending point. Conventionally, a (new) customer needs to go through a tedious process including calling customer service maybe for more than one express delivery company to get a mail collector’s contact information. In the technology of the patent, a pre-set electronic map has defined the work range of each courier. Whenever a sender inputs a location by its latitude and longitude coordinates, computer system calculates the work range that automatically directs a designated courier belonging to that work range. One may then consult with the courier for information and make an appointment to pick up the mail, which may save manpower from the call center. The mail collector, based on the sender’s location of the latitude and longitude coordinates from the mobile APP, accurately finds the sender. The collector may print the mail bar code before sticks it on the mail when picking up the mail.
Mail sorting – accurate throughout to the mail distributor at the destination point. In the conventional way, the auto sorting system relies on a huge database of addresses to describe the assigned work range for every transit point on the mailing path. Any change of address or the work range would cause difficulty to maintain the database particularly for the distributors handling a big number of mails. Under the technology of the patent, work ranges for all couriers are well defined on an electronic map. Latitude and longitude coordinates of recipient’s location will be used to determine the work range covering the recipient location and then the corresponding mail distributor. Meanwhile, the work range of any courier is corresponding to a routing scheme structured by the individual company. This information contains such as transit regions, dispatching points and couriers. Namely, the information of the collector and the distributor gives two “super transit code”. Utilizing the two “super transit code” will identify all the transit and sorting points along the transit sorting path between the collector and the distributor. Therefore, sorting process at all points along the path can be performed automatically by scanning the mail bar code.
Mail transit – determine sorting points in advance. Note that, in the conventional way, addresses or postal codes can’t carry information of the transit points from its routing scheme. In addition, change of address or the work range occurs frequently. It becomes hard or hardly to determine the sorting points path in advance in simulation calculation by the computer system. The technology from the patent solves the above problem since the “super transit code” carries information of the transit points. More specifically, all transit/sorting points between the mail sender and the mail recipient are either in the “super transit code” at the mail collection point or the “super transit code” from the mail distribution point. Therefore, at time the waybill is submitted the couriers at the sender and the recipient locations can be identified according to the longitudes and latitudes of the sender and the recipient. Two “super transit code” corresponding to the two couriers at the sender and the recipient points are determined. The computer system immediately produces the transit/sorting points path between the mail sender and the mail recipient. If information of weight for each delivered mail is added and integrated to the transit sorting path for a given time on the same day, the transit data between transit points can be calculated a few hours ahead or even earlier. Then the transportation means can be arranged accordingly. With the transit sorting path being decided beforehand, calculation for sub-packaging, unpacking and repacking become very easy under the same path.
Mail distribution – Smart and automatically calculates the distribution route. The conventional way can’t develop an optimal route based on addresses for the distribution. So the distribution route development and the mail delivery ordering can’t be automatically created. On the other hand, the methodology of the patent has labels of the latitude and longitude coordinates for all mails in distribution work range. The distributor doesn’t have to memorize all the locations of the streets and the buildings. An optimal distribution route and the corresponding mail ordering can be calculated smartly, which significantly raises the distribution efficiency. At the same time, the distribution route enables to know the distributor’s location and to estimate the time of the distributor’s arrival. This provides the customer with a good experience in need.
Optimize locations for setting up transit centers and assignment for work ranges. Professionals from the postal/express company know how important the locations of the transit centers (such as regions and dispatching points) and adjustment of the work ranges mean to the efficiency of both the mail transit and the delivery. Those efficiencies rely on the best areas chosen to meet the mail throughputs within a certain period of time. In other words, there’s need to establish a statistical model between the number of mails and the mail location for a given period of time. According to the technology of the patent, latitude and longitude coordinates are easily obtained for each sender or recipient. Based on the coordinates of mail’s location and the delivered/transited workload in a given period of time, computer system may produce a 3-dimensional graph and further smartly calculate to generate some suitable areas that are represented by their boundaries expressed in latitude and longitude system. All these determine the locations for the transit centers and the adjustments for the work ranges of the couriers. As a remark, these two functions are derived from the patent but very helpful in deciding the suitable boundaries in the latitude and longitude expression within which the efficiency of the transit, collection and distribution are optimal. However, this is not what the conventional way using addresses can do.
In virtue of latitude and longitude being universal, constant and the patent technology being uniform, a “cloud platform” can be established. The “cloud platform” includes information of express delivery companies, couriers and customers. The couriers use the mobile APP to improve their work efficiency in mail collection and distribution. The couriers and the mail recipients use the APP to inform or search for mail locations in a convenient communication. The mail senders and the recipients can be located through mobile phones anytime and anywhere. There’s no need to know or fill in the long addresses or postal codes. The “cloud platform” calculates for information including the collector, the distributor and the postal transit path made up of multiple transit sorting points immediately when the sender simulatively or formally submits the mailing waybill. These are exactly the experience the customers need, being able to quickly obtain locations of sender and recipient through smart cellular phone, to get accurate contact information of the collector and the distributor, to track the mail location, to know when the mail is picked up and arrives. What the express delivery companies gain from the “cloud platform” are calculating the transit sorting path and the delivery routes of the couriers, tracking and monitoring if mails are transited accurately and on time. Therefore, the whole process of the mail delivery achieves completely a management of data, precision, standardization and intelligence.
In regions the patent has been globally applied, each year more than 3.6 billion people need to send hundreds of billions of mails of magnitude. The “cloud platform” produces data of mail dispatching, sorting, distribution and a scheme integrated with all transit sorting path information. The postal/express delivery companies may share the transit means and auto sorting facilities. One can imagine how much cost saving the technology of the patent can make over the conventional auto technology using addresses. One can also imagine, with the constancy of latitude and longitude coordinates and the mobile technology is able to quickly identify locations of the coordinates, the technology of the patent could be the sustainable solution in terms of the transit efficiency and the optimal customers’ experience in the business of the postal/express delivery.