Courier Management System with Intelligent Cost Estimation

Project Title

Project Area of Specialization

Internet of Things

Project Summary

Delivery logistics is one of the most emerging industries in the world, worth over 70 billion dollars. Millions of people use delivery services on daily basis sending precious cargo to their loved ones all over the world. Sometimes the cargo gets lost due to numerous reasons few of them being poor accountability of shipper. This field is lacking advanced technology and people on both ends i.e. customer and staff are facing numerous difficulties in the process of delivering
boxes of various dimensions.
Courier companies have become an essential part of everybody’s life and for business who needs courier services on a regular basis to deliver parcel, business documents and other important things from one place to another. Different courier companies use different methods to calculate
the cost of the object. Our approach is to design and deploy a system for the courier companies that will use and calculate the dimensions of a cuboid shaped box with the help of specially designed sensors using image processing techniques (proposed solution) instead of calculating
dimensions with measuring tape.

Project Objectives

The exact cost estimation of courier object is an important problem in courier management systems. Presently courier companies in Pakistan are using boxes of different volumes for courier objects. Mostly, the object is short of dimension regarding box size. Due to which customers suffers regarding price estimation. For example if a courier company designed boxes of various size for delivery, among them minimum box size is 1Kg and customer courier object is 0.5 Kg. So
customers have to pay for 1 kg instead of 0.5 kg object weight. This increased customer billing charges. The proposed system will automatically calculate the cost of object based on its dimensions, actual weight, customer priority and destination. This way it will facilitate customers
regarding overbilling of their objects and also benefits courier companies to find automated solution regarding cost estimation.

Project Implementation Method

Our project phases are defined broadly in three categories, according to the scope of work involved in each design,
Microcontroller Programming, Display Programming, and Integration Hardware.
PHASE 1:
Database Design
User Interface Design
Implementation the log in and sign up module
Implementation of shipment/ booking module
Reporting Model
PHASE 2: Camera Integration
Cameras are frequently used in state-of-the-art systems in order to get detailed information of the environment. In this
phase we will integrate our KINECT camera with the Windows by installing all the software development kit (SDKs) and by fulfilling all the requirements.
PHASE 3: Image processing
Automatic shipment cost estimation

Benefits of the Project

1. It will provide customer satisfaction.
2. This system will eliminate fraud factor.
3. It will reduce human effort.
4. It will provide accuracy in measuring the dimensions and cost of the object.
5. It is time efficient.
6. This technology has not been introduced in Pakistan yet.

Technical Details of Final Deliverable

The final deliverable of “Courier Management System with Intelligent Cost Estimation” will be a desktop application along with documentation manual having all the technical details of application. It will be developed in C# language. The application will be compatible with all the versions of Windows.