IT infrastructure Plan for Smooth and efficient Airway delivery

Assignment Taken

Plan on IT Infrastructure Including Apps, Website/s, and Management Information System

Case Understanding

For providing a smooth and efficient drone delivery service to the businesses and the customers, problems associated with the IT department are as follows: 1. There is no API integration in place that integrates the functionality of the existing client’s business platform with the end-to-end drone operation and management system. 2. there is no technology involved to avoid the misuse or unethical use of the drone services both by the customer and as well as their end customer. 3. No collision detection system when the drone is traveling from one place to another place in a city during delivery. A collision can be due to bird 4. It is important to know the prevailing weather conditions in each location to avoid damages to the drone due to turbulence or any other anomalies. For this, there is no inbuilt weather conditions tracking system enabled. 5. There is no provision to ensure that the right user and the right customer are picking or dropping the package to and from the drone 6. Situations where the end customer is not available at the drop location, waiting period for the drone, drone dropping or pick up functionality fails at their respective locations needs to be addressed 7. No visibility of the brand, the product, and the services that are offered to the prospective clients 8. No Real time tracking of drone delivery service provided

BCS Solution Summary

To kickstart the drone delivery service, the company should provide following IT capability to drone, and the people involved in the smooth functioning of the delivery service. 1. Drone capability: The drone should have a 360-degree camera, a sense and avoid technology to avoid obstacles during the travel, scanners attached that can scan the content of the package, able to verify the OTP from the end customer and the business, GPS for real time tracking and an algorithm to follow flight routes but on small scale that is within the city. 2. An MIS reporting system that will integrate the existing end to end operation and management system with the business platform. This will provide the real time tracking of the drone service, number of drones in-transit and their location, Number of orders picked-up, delivered, and delayed, tracking the environmental conditions faced by the drones, analyse ordering patterns of the customers and the rating history of each order– for customer insights as well as exchange information between the drone and the businesses involved. This system will inform the operators if the drones malfunctions and any of the DGCA guidelines are violated during the delivery service. 3. Use of Cloud based applications for data storage and processing, and for leveraging data analytics 4. A cloud-based infrastructure—that provides concurrent user support for processing and responding to requests and relevant queries in near real-time, ensuring optimized performance and scalability 5. Developing a website that contains all information related to the company, product and services offered, the business areas that we cater to and 24X7 Chat Bot facility for queries and suggestions. 6. Analysing Data with AI and ML for better forecasting of demands as per sales history and geographical constraints. A dashboard to visualise the evaluation of the key performance indicators of the business. 7. HR Dashboard for HR department to track the attendance, salary, leave and Cost per person spent by the company 8. Include new features in the Client’s business platform to include weights of each order placed and its corresponding cost

Solution

Drone delivery process

From the drone delivery process flow digram attached, following IT requirements and the process is as follows:

An end customer books an order through a business say a food delivery platform. The food delivery platform will contain list of restaurants, the food menu along with approx. weight of each dish in the menu. The customer on selecting his/her choice of order, the final cart will consist of the food cost along with an option to avail drone service and a comparison with respect to time saved. The end customer will also be provided with the total cost, he will pay extra to avail this delivery service.

Since there are 5 drones, the drones are strategically placed at different locations to cater to the demand and maximise the deliveries and minimise the round trips. The pick-up locations coordinates are geo-locked while onboarding the restaurants who are willing to cater their delivery through drones and decided as per the restaurant’s convenience. While the drop off locations’ coordinates are placed 15-50 meter distance from the Customer GPS location. Further, we use sense and avoid technology to avoid obstacles and adapt to the change topology.

Once the customer makes the payment through the payment gateway, The drone that is closest to the restaurant will receive the weight of the parcel, the geo-locked pick-up point and the drop off coordinates.It will start commuting from its facility to the restaurant using the flight route algorithm that is fed to the drone system. The operators at the facility can monitor the drone using the real time tracking (GPS), Visualise them and is alerted when a drone malfunction using the MIS reporting system.

The speed of the drone will be dynamic depending on the total estimated time to prepare the food and delivery of the food to the end customer. Once the drone reaches the pick-up location, it waits for the confirmation from the restaurant that the about the completion of food preparation. The restaurants will receive an OTP from the food delivery app that will be verified by drone at the pick-up point. Once OTP is verified, it lowers its altitude and the Drone box  unlocks where the package is placed. After this, drone scanner activates and scans for the weight and the content of the package to cross validate the information that was fed to it. Also, when the box opens, the camera on top of the drone captures the image of the person who is at its front. Once the weight and the content are cross validated and the contents are deemed safe, the drone locks the door of the box and starts rising its altitude. Now, the end customer will receive a real time update of the drone through map where they can track their delivery. When the drone is near the strategically placed drop off point, the end customer is notified about the same. The end customer will reach this drop off point and enter the OTP that is received at his/her end to validate as the right end customer. Once it is verified by the drone, it lowers its altitude and unlocks the box. The customer receives it.

.

MIS system:

Using drone status, operators can monitor the drones. This will include the drone health, the environment conditions, the geographic location, the speed , the altitude at which it is traveling. These will be monitored on a real time basis.

Receiver and Customer give feedback, which is updated on “Customer insights section of the MIS system, along with time taken to reach the drop location and any issues faced on the way. The MIS system will also provide insights on the geo-locations from where the orders are prominent for marketing people to target their marketing strategy.

Average time to service the pin-codes: The time taken to service each pin-code and can be readily serviceable

The average delivery time vs the actual time taken: It will provide insight on the flight route algorithm that we have adapted and help us understand better to optimise the difference for speedy delivery

Deliveries planned, fulfilled and delayed: The number of orders that fulfilled, delayed and demand on a particular day will be graphically presented.

Average rating / customer satisfaction: This will provide insights on the ratings given by customers who have availed drone delivery service and their CSAT score.

 

Data and Analytics

All the data will be stored at the cloud for better processing and use the cloud application to create dashboards for sales, target, customer satisfaction and provide insights related to business. The dashboard will provide the real time tracking of the drone service, number of drones in-transit and their location, Number of orders picked-up, delivered, and delayed, tracking the environmental conditions faced by the drones, analyse ordering patterns graphically,

Interactive website

Further an interactive website will be developed to provide a digital presence and brand visibility of the airway delivery company. This is done to support the marketing efforts so that prospective clients can visit us and contact us if they wish to avail our services. The website will also contain a 24*7 chatbot to address FAQs and any queries of the traffic that is received on the website.

 

Exception cases:

1. Any deviation from the SLAs trigger an alert and the backend operator can take manual control of the drone to bring it on the desired course.
2. If the drone malfunctions, the spare drones that are in the closest facility will be deployed to deliver the packages.
3. If the recipient is not available at the drop off location, automated call is made to the end customer to arrive at the drop off point. If the customer doesn’t come within next 7 mins, the drone will drop the delivery package at the warehouse facility and the customer has to pick it up from there. This will be made clear in the Terms and Conditions
4. If the drone’s functionality fails and more packages are accidently dropped, this will trigger an alert and the nearest delivery boy will be deployed to deliver the items to doorstep of the correct recipients
5. If someone misuses the drone delivery service, their image captured by the drone and the geo-coordinates are shared with the operator or the support staff. These people will then claim the insurance for the damages caused to drones and file a complaint about the same with authority concerned to take necessary actions

Conclusion

Conclusion: Drone-based delivery services are still in nascent stage in India and are awaiting regulatory approvals from DGCA. Airway Delivery has done its beta testing and got the necessary approval from DGCA. When many companies are still in beta stage trying out their drone capabilities like SpiceJet’s SpiceXpress, Swiggy drone service, Amazon prime Air etc, Airway Delivery is entering the market at the right time as the barriers to entry are low and the Ministry of Aviation is encouraging startups to enter into consortia of Dunzo and Swiggy. The company needs to deploy AI enabled drones that can be tracked live on a MIS dashboard. A full-fledged website will be used to improved brand visibility and track the traffic for optimizing the marketing campaigns. Further, MIS system will help in understanding the performance metric, customer sentiments, targets, sales, customer satisfaction and if and when required provide alerts so that backend operators can take control of the drones. This will also help in tracking all financial parameters and further help optimize the functioning of other departments like marketing, HR, Legal and supply chain etc.

Attached File Details

View Attachment file (figure 1_Drone Delivery process flow.JPG)