The Shipment Go

Inspiration

The use of less-than-container load (LCL) is increasing throughout the years. LCL provides the customers the advantage of sending the desire amount of items they want and need. Nevertheless, despite the benefits of this shipment method, a tracking system to provide door-to-door information of the packages’ location to the customers is not available. In order to increase the use of LCL and the customers’ satisfaction with the service, The Shipment Go propose a tracking system for the whole shipment process inspired in the ones used by UPS, DHL and FedEx.

What it does

The Shipment Go provides a simple and fast tracking system to the customers to increase their trust and reliability to the shipment process. First, the customers can sign up in a website where they can keep track of their packages from the earliest stage of the shipment process to the moment they arrive without losing any detail. The customers, as well, can see an estimated time of arrival based on the port of departure and the destination port. In addition, an alert system will send updates to the customers through SMS messages, so they do not need to constantly log in to know their order status.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into three main challenges:

logic challenges,
technical challenges and
time challenges. First, we needed to efficiently set up a work plan and assign the right tasks to the right persons. We discussed our abilities and decided who was in charge of which duties. Second, throughout the process of designing our solution to the problem, there were some technical issues. As an example, one of our principal difficulties was to make functional code to send SMS notifications. Finally, the main obstacle was to design the best solution in 48 hours. However, with good goals set up and constant track of our progress, we overcome these issues.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of the final result of our proposed solution. We developed a well-organized strategy and overcame problems to come up with a functional tracking system in 48 hours.

What we learned

We learned about the challenges faced by the shipment industry in specific, LCL. In addition, we learned about proficient team work and fast tasks distribution and performance.

What's next for The Shipment Go

The future plans for The Shipment Go is to include weather analysis and information from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection to produce a more accurate tracking system. We want to gather information from LCL customers about what other features could increase their used of LCL shipments. Finally, we also want to provide a door-to-door tracking system to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection and shipping companies.