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Stepping into the age of intelligent parcels | #SBHACK2019

Written by #SBHACK2019 | Apr 16, 2019 10:00:00 PM

Swiss Post, modum.io AG, Q_PERIOR, MS Direct, and accenture together defined the challenges we want you to tackle to ensure an intelligent future of last-mile parcel delivery. We think we need to bring stakeholders together at the final steps of the supply chain in order to create an ecosystem which, simultaneously, provides efficient and practical solutions while fostering transparency. You might see this differently – and we would love to be surprised.

Emerging delivery service providers are radically changing the way we buy and receive our products. However, current solutions cannot provide real time data, which leads to delays and lack of trust. Furthermore, a large part of the transport capacity remains unused due to the difficulty of balancing supply and demand.

One of the major challenges for suppliers and service providers in this context is traceability. As the system involves many players, it is almost impossible for customers to obtain real-time information about where and in what state their parcel is. Which, in case of damage, makes it very difficult to identify the root cause of the parcel’s damage – or at least the exact time and location when the parcel was damaged.

On the one hand, professional logistics providers are desperate for ways to maximize the use of their capacity. On the other hand, private individuals who commute daily have idle capacities which remain untapped due to a lack of information, as well as a lack of trust. This not only increases the volume of traffic in our cities but also our carbon footprint.

So, the question we have for you is: How can the delivery process be easily managed in an intelligent system that authenticates a person’s ID, predicts the best time of delivery, knows the coordinates of the place of delivery and delivery status, monitors the condition of the product, and delivery authorization? And how can we verify and aggregate the diverse existing track and trace solutions within the supply chain?

To overcome these challenges, we need to establish new solutions. A higher level of trust is needed to form the foundation of the entire system. This would enable a patchworked delivery chain among all kinds of partners. And we believe that blockchain technology can be the key factor to help us turn these pain points into gain points.

We hope you are ready to hack this future together with us. We need a lot of bright minds and able hands to make it happen!