It is well known that last-mile delivery often constitutes the most expensive portion of shipping and can consist of up to 53% of total shipping costs, according to a McKinsey report. Furthermore, small-parcel delivery can feel expensive given that delivery fees are fixed, or even charged at a higher price. For instance, Grab, a regional super-app well known for its food delivery services, charges an additional small-order fee. Replacing the most expensive portion of delivery, the human, with automated drones is one way to reduce the cost of last-mile delivery.
However, the potential of drones in delivery has yet to be fully implemented. We believe that we can uncover meaningful value in utilizing drones for delivery purposes. To a price-sensitive customer, a proposition of value is the lower marginal and unit costs of delivery operations. In addition to price, we believe that a drone network system can provide to the customer a centralised, non-fragmented view of multiple concurrent orders, improving the customer journey and experience with delivery.
We wish to explore the feasibility of such a system by first creating the customer-facing management software that such a network will require. This customer facing management software is DrDelivery.
This section provides a brief overview of DrDelivery.
- Order Management
- Create New Order
- View Order details
- Manage Item details (e.g. quantity, total bill)
- Create Multiple Orders at once
- Item Management
- Add item to Order
- Delete item from Order
- View item details (e.g. price, item description)
- Drone Management
- Match drone of "free" status to order
- Update status of drone
- View drone
- Delivery Simulation
- Update Order Status (in real time)
- View delivery progress on Map or from Home Page
- Multiple route highlighting for multiple orders
To access the app, visit https://drdelivery.vercel.app and sign up for an account!