Powering the Journey of a Diwali Gift Horse

Ever wondered what goes behind delivering those Diwali gifts? In this blog post, we make an attempt to go into the details of how those neatly packaged items traverse through the complex supply chain network to reach your home and lighten up your Diwali.

Diwali makes for one of the most interesting times for logistics — something that can flip a festival from that of happiness to that of disgruntlement. The logistics of Diwali gifts essentially contains three main sections:

1. First mile: Movement of the gift from the seller/source to the origin hub
2. Middle miles: The line haul of these items from Origin Hub to destination Hub
3. Last Mile: The delivery of the items from the destination hub to the final end recipient

Solutions deployed across the value chain

There are many players that contribute to this. Let’s look at all the members of this supply chain.

1. The sender. Be it sellers or individuals, there are two types of senders:

• Those that send these directly from their location
• Those that use Fulfillment centers such as those provided by DTDC, Delhivery etc. They basically stock their items in these fulfillment centers and the logsitics company directly fulfills the delivery on getting the order.

2. Determining serviceability while sending

• Serviceability as now is determined at the Pincode level. This becomes a problem in Tier 2 locations, where a particular pincode extends over a very large distance. Even cities like Gurgaon have one pincode of 122002 covering almost all of the city!
• Logistics companies are now marking and tagging all parts of India with polygons on map so as to get full visibility on what exact location they can service and how long it would take.

3. The executive that does the pickups

• The field executive has to maintain a list of pickups and in what order they must be performed.
• Systems optimize the order matching process so that the right executive gets the right pickup.
• This is done taking into account the weight of the packages to be picked, the route available and whether the customers have special requirements.

4. The sorting and bagging process at origin hub

• A parcel can go to Lucknow either by a direct flight or by a flight to Delhi and then a connecting onward road journey.
• Dashboards are put in place that run algorithms powered by 20+ variables to give real time visibility to the operations manager on the best way to do the line haul.

5. The Middle miles

• These are either Flights, Trains or Trucks that carry bags of parcels from the origin to the destination hub.
• Sensors on these bags and trucks relay information in real time to the central control tower.
• Real time data processing engines assist operations managers with real time alerts on route deviation, delays and other things that may send signals to customers on potential delays.

6. Allocation to delivery executives at destination hub

• Parcels are unbagged at the destination hub and readied for allotment.
• Systems assist the operations manager on the best and most efficient way to distribute parcels amongst delivery boys so as to minimize the efforts going into delivery.

7. The delivery process

• The executives use Mobile apps that have all the data for the delivery.
• They complete the delivery on the app once the parcel is handed over to the recipient.
• The app works seamlessly offline as well so that tier 2 towns with patchy internet have no difficulties in running operations.

8. The Overarching Control Tower

• Operations managers’ tasks range from allotting deliveries to even more strategic decision making responsibilities such as which delivery boy is not performing as per expectations or who to reward for their hardwork.
• Logistics companies can spot trends in delivery patterns so as to warn customers before hand if something is going wrong.
• “Promise Engine” enables logistics companies to make a promise to customers on a time window and even narrow this committed time window as the system improves with time.
• Managers make use of these predictive analytics tools that scour through 100 million + data points to ensure that deliveries are happening efficiently and nothing is going wrong.
• There are also alerts for fake deliveries — the tech is similar to that which enables Uber to spot fake driver updates and enables managers to work in real time to prevent customer dissatisfaction.

These just give a broad idea of the many different aspects of what goes into the logistics of a customer’s Diwali gift’s journey. The processes that go behind ensuring that there is indeed a smile on the customer’s face when they receive the package.

To know more about the role Shipsy plays in this process, read more about our work on data driven logistics as covered by the Economic Times — https://goo.gl/h3VNtl