Patent Technology FAQs
1. What is the application type of the patent technology?
Unlike other patent technology or patented product needs to open up new market, this patent technology helps postal/express delivery enterprises to efficiency, save cost and enhance customer’s experience. Under the same business volume, the patent technology along with its derived functions systematically grows the company’s profit. It can also be extended to such as robot, pilotless aircraft and other technological areas in intellectual express delivery.
2. What are the commercial and social values of patent technology?
The patent technology can determine transit data, dispatching data, precise sorting at all sorting points (particularly up to courier level), mail location labeling and mail distribution route at the time of mail collection. All these can be hard or hardly done under the conventional method. In countries the patent has entered for application, the market is as big as 100 billion overall postal mails per year. Economic benefit gained from adoption of the patent technology by postal delivery entities is what the patent’s commercial value is. On the one hand, the patent technology achieves cost saving, efficiency increasing and customers’ experience enhancement in a systematic, integrated, extensible and simple way. On the other hand, the application of the patent technology in the express mail sector would have a great impact on people’s daily life and could be a great model as a realization of "internet +" on energy saving and carbon dioxide emission reduction.
3. When can the patent technology be implemented?
The patent technology can boost the efficiency in the whole process of mail collection, transit, sorting and distribution so that it can be applied anytime to meet the needs of a new or an existing express delivery company in its pursuing for efficiency and excellence. Even for an express delivery company that does not have mechanical sorting device, the patent technology can still be applied in the entire mailing process except sorting.
4. What is the distinguishing feature of the patent technology and the conventional technology?
Currently, people fill in addresses and postal codes when sending documents or parcels.
The conventional technology adopts addresses or postal codes to perform the transit/sorting, and to indicate mail locations and working scopes of the transit/sorting points. The patent technology uses all transit/sorting information to perform the transit/sorting and adopts the latitude and longitude to indicate mail locations and working scopes of transit/sorting points (particularly the work ranges of couriers).
5. What are the main functions of the distinguishing feature of the patent technology?
First, it improves the accuracy of mail transit/sorting.
The postal/express delivery is a business of benefit on scale. A mail or parcel needs to go through the process of mail collection, transit, sorting and distribution, and be sorted at all transit points before reaches to the recipient from the sender. It is transit sorting that makes the difference of the express delivery from the logistics business. The sorting is to classify each mail at a transit/sorting point to next transit/sorting point. So being able to determine the transit/sorting points and their formed path at the time the sender submits the waybill is the key for the optimization of the efficiency of transit/sorting and the customer’s experience.
The conventional technology adopts address or postal code to represent mail location and working scope of transit/sorting points. However, the ambiguity and outdatedness of addresses may result in hardly or incorrectly defining the working scopes of the transit/sorting points the mail belongs to. Noted that the latitude and longitude can be used not only to stand for any location on the earth but it is precise and constant, they can therefore assure the accuracy in determining the working scopes and further improve the accuracy in mail transit/sorting.
Second, it avoids the address to the latitude and longitude mapping (conversion).
The patent technology can directly obtain the latitudes and longitudes of the mail sender’s and the mail recipient’s locations with smart phone through GPS. The latitudes and longitude will then be used for GIS to calculate the mail transit/sorting path and the mail delivery route, which avoids the mapping from the addresses to the latitude and longitude. In fact, such a mapping not only needs a huge database and correspondence to coordinates of the latitude and longitude for every address but also after all does not overcome the difficulty in mapping for those new or ambiguous addresses.
Third, it improves the time to determine the transit/sorting path.
The conventional technology performs mail transit/sorting based on address or postal code. The patent technology does so according to at all transit/sorting information which is derived from the transit/sorting scheme defined by individual mail delivery companies. These transit/sorting information include information at the transit/sorting levels of dispatching and the courier for instance which is not included in the conventional method based on addresses or postal codes since the traditional address or postal codes are not strictly corresponding transit/sorting points. The patent technology prevails. It is that the transit information from the routing scheme makes it possible to determine the mail collector, mail distributor and all the transit/sorting points in advance.
It’s known from the above that ambiguity and outdatedness of address data cause difficulty to determine work areas of the transit/sorting points. That’s why the conventional way can only calculate and decide sorting point step by step (from one sorting point to next one) and then the mailing path afterwards. The patent technology uses the latitude and longitude does not only enable to precisely decide the work areas of the transit/sorting points through which a mail goes and then the mailing path, but also to provide very simple and convenient way to determine including the mail collector, mail distributor and the transit/sorting path at time the mail sender submits waybill. It is such determination method and the mailing path that raise the mailing efficiency and the customers’ experience.
6. Can mailing path information be determined based on the information of the mail sender and the recipient in advance?
Whether the patent technology can determine the transit/sorting path in a simple and convenient way in practice is cared a lot by postal/express delivery companies. In fact, the patent technology can decide information of the work range, the corresponding couriers and the transit/sorting points from the routing scheme defined by individual express delivery companies, namely the "super transit code". For instance, China – Northwest - Qinghai province - Xining city - Qinghai university - Courier A and China - Beijing city - Qinghua university - Courier B.
With the two couriers’ (the mail collector and the mail distributor) names and therefore their "super transit code", how to determine the mailing path between? It is the content design carrying all the transit information that is superior to the conventional way based on addresses and the postal codes. All the transit/sorting points between the mail sender and the mail recipient are either in the "super transit code" of the mail collector or in the "super transit code" of the mail distributor. The transit/sorting points path will be formed by deleting those points in common of the two "super transit codes" starting from the high to low level. For instance, for two "super transit code" of China - Northwest Region - Qinghai Province Xining City – Qinghai Normal University – Courier A and China – Beijing City – Qinghua University – Courier B, the transit points path will be formed when only excluding "China". Namely, the path is "China Northwest Region Qinghai Province Xining City Qinghai University Courier A" - "China Northwest Region Qinghai Province Xining City Qinghai University" - "China Northwest Region Qinghai Province Xining City" - "China Northwest Region" – "China Beijing City" – " China Beijing City Qinghua University" – "China Beijing City Qinghua University Courier B".
If there exists a direct routing scheme between non-capital cities, for instance, "China - Guangdong Province - Shenzhen City" directly to "China - Beijing City", it can be dealt by a well defined pre-assignment. There are relatively not many such cases after all. Therefore, the mail transit point path will be determined by taking an additional consideration for any availability of direct route after applying the simple and general procedure proposed. Of course, using the addresses of the mail sender and the recipient and the consequently identified couriers can also form transit/sorting point path. But it is just as the conventional way that the transit/sorting point is obtained step by step till the last sorting point. Therefore, the transit/sorting point path can only be formed after the last sorting point is determined. In other words, the path is post-determined.
7. Is it necessary to use mobile device to obtain latitude and longitude in patent technology?
One of the goal for the patent technology to achieve is whether it can determine the transit/sorting path for any mail from the change of address to the latitude and longitude. Address information can be ambiguous or outdated. Address may not always identify its location on an electronic map. That is not all streets, buildings or residential addresses can be converted to the latitude and longitude through electronic map. These indicate that the mail sender and the recipient need a certain mobile device to obtain the latitude and longitude for any location on the earth at any anytime and anywhere to overcome the difficulty of the ambiguity or outdatedness of address and the uncertainty of address conversion. That implies why using the latitude and longitude to bypass the method based on addresses can determine the mailing path for any mail. Noticing the wide application of the location sharing as to "Uber" and "Didi" for instance, a mobile device similar to the smart mobile phone with GPS can be a simple option.
8. Whether is there alternative way in applying the distinguishing features of the patent technology?
Any patented technology achieves a certain technological result through a technological scheme. If there is an alternative to achieve the same result, the patented technology can hardly create the commercial value.
Postal/express delivery differs from logistics on transit/sorting. The 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. The mailing path is determined by three methods of locating mail, representing the work area of transit point and expressing the routing scheme. The patent technology uses the latitude and longitude to represent mail location and work area of transit point. The name corresponding to the work area in the latitude and longitude contains information of transit/sorting points converted from the routing scheme, namely the "super transit code".
The latitude and longitude is a concept that can precisely represent any location on the earth. It was invented in 120 AD. Even until the 21 century today, there is no any other way better and more suitable for computer processing the latitudes and longitudes as a locating method. Therefore, it is hard to imagine an existence of methodology that can replace the patent technology to represent mail location and work area by using the latitude and longitude.
After the patent technology calculates work ranges of the mail collector and the distributor based on their latitudes and longitudes, the work ranges must contain information carried from the routing scheme just as the conventional way uses the address and postal codes to do transit sorting. So it is necessary to contain transit information that makes possible the determination of the mailing path when the mail sender submits the waybill.
In addition, the conventional way has to rely on information of streets, traffic in the GIS system and location of mail in the latitude and longitude before it can calculate an optimal distributing route. However, not all addresses can be converted to their latitudes and longitudes. The latitude and longitude mark at the mail collection becomes irreplaceable basic data.
It is shown that the constancy of the latitude and longitude and the mobile quick locating technology make the patent technology possibly be an efficiency optimized and sustainable solution for the postal/express delivery sector.
9. What is the application mode of the patent technology?
In virtue of the global universality and constancy of the latitude and longitude as well as the standardization and uniformity of the patent technology, a third-party "cloud platform" can be built. The couriers and the customers will be part of the "platform". The mail sender and the recipient obtain and input information of the latitudes and longitudes along with the phone numbers through mobile APP. The couriers use mobile APP to increase efficiency at the collection and the distribution. The postal/express delivery companies need to predefine the work ranges of the couriers, and their corresponding information of the transit sorting produced from the routing scheme in the "cloud platform". At the same time, the companies fetch from the "platform" the calculated sorting data, mailing data, transit planning data (integrated from information of the mailing path) and the location data of the mail recipient and sender.
10. What good experience does the patent technology bring to customers?
The patent technology does not only improve the efficiency of an express delivery company but also provide directly or indirectly customers with good experience. For the direct part, firstly, the mail sender and the recipient can use mobile phone to determine their locations in the latitude and longitude other than need to know or input the long information of addresses and postal codes. Secondly, the "cloud platform" can calculate information including the mail collector, the distributor and the mailing path made of all the transit/sorting points when the sender submits the waybill or in simulation, which give the on control experience to the customers on estimating when the mail will be picked up at the beginning, delivered at the end and where the mail is in the mailing process. Thirdly, the waybill only has the bar code but not any private information such as the customers’ names, addresses and phone numbers since the computer can validate the personal information in the system. This protects the privacy particularly the real names are mandated in express delivery today. For the indirect part, the recipient may check where the mail is, when the mail most likely arrives through mobile phone APP and scan for signing and receiving. The recipient’s mobile phone APP can build up communication with the mail distributor’s mobile APP to make appointment or inform arrival in mail distribution in advance. The enhanced mailing efficiency itself ensures a better service quality for customers.