Mobile Based Shipping Management System

Abstract

With the rapid expansion of online shopping and increasingly need for efficiency and security of delivery, cruel competition among couriers grow dramatically fierce since each delivery firms are scrambling to have a larger share in the economic pie. To become more competitive in the market, courier companies will focus on the logistics system design to reduce the operational cost and increase efficiency, thus generate considerable revenue. While small courier companies cannot justify the huge cost of highly advanced system, the mobile devices carried with driver may be used to replace dedicated shipping management device. This project aims to design a reliable and flexible logistics management system, which could be used by small courier company for intra-city delivery. It consists of three components, namely, mobile application, front end management system and back-end web service. The final product android application, is capable of tracking delivery process and communicating with central server to update information to database, most importantly, it can do delivery schedule optimization. Besides, front end web management system is capable of dispatching shipments, track driver and shipment management. Furthermore, the project is deployed to Microsoft Azure cloud platform. Instead of using costly advanced logistics system, this project could be used for small firms to improve the delivery management process and strengthen their competitiveness.