DHL 2011 Annual Report Download - page 28

PLANNING INTELLIGENTLY
1,000
PARCELS
transported by
the SmartTruck
each day in the
Bonn test region.
15%
FEWER KILOMETRES
driven by the SmartTrucks in
tests conducted in Germany
and routes completed on
average   faster.
30%
IMPROVEMENT
IN CARBON
EFFICIENCY
by .
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Bangalore, the “Silicon Valley of India” and
the country’s third largest city, is also one of its ad-
ministrative, industrial, commercial and service cen-
tres. You have to know the city’s maze of streets and
alleyways well to fi nd your way around here, even
more so to fi nd the quickest way to get from one
place to another and avoid congestion. Now try to
do that amongst the fl ood of around . million
vehicles toiling through the streets of this mega-
city – a number that’s growing all the time. Tra c
jams and delays, not to mention the pungent smell
of exhaust fumes, are as commonplace as the cars.
Navigating through the maze
A number of the couriers at ’s subsidiary,
Blue Dart, of which  holds an 
 share, now
have it a lot easier. Their SmartTrucks help them
navigate the quickest route through Bangalore’s busy
streets. India’s largest air express provider has been
taking part in a trial project to test these intelligent
vehicles since summer . What is so special about
the SmartTruck? “Shipments are sorted automati-
cally before the vehicles leave the distribution cen-
tre,” explains Anil Khanna, Managing Director
at Blue Dart Express Ltd. Once sorted and loaded,
the parcels arrive at their destinations faster than
ever with the SmartTruck’s help. The vehicles are
equipped with dynamic route-planning software
that uses  technology to calculate the optimal
route based on the current order situation in the van.
The  unit follows the van’s every move in real
time, automatically reacting to current tra c infor-
mation and incoming orders.
From Berlin to Bangalore
After successful tests in Berlin, Bonn and
Cologne, the plan was to integrate the system into
the global  infrastructure and test the SmartTruck
in a mega city outside Europe. Bangalore presented
an ideal test location. The city and its . million
residents are experiencing an economic boom. Blue
Dart operates an , m logistics centre at the
airport just  kilometres outside the city. Routes
into the city are long and the streets are almost
always congested.
Designed in Germany, the SmartTruck system
required considerable modifi cation before it could
be used in Bangalore. After all, Indian cities are
quite different from German ones. For example,
many streets in Bangalore do not have names and
there are no house numbers. Delivery addresses
are often incomplete and postcodes missing. Teams
from Blue Dart and  worked together closely to
fl esh out the differences that impact the software
and develop solutions that led to a custom-built
SmartTruck concept for the Indian market.
Higher e ciency, better service
By May , SmartTrucks should be covering
all incoming shipments from the Asia Pacifi c region
on fi ve separate inner-city routes in Bangalore – but
results are already coming in. “We are seeing higher
parcel processing capabilities, shorter transit times,
synchronised letter and parcel processes and fewer
kilometres being travelled by each vehicle,” says
Anil Khanna. This means one thing for our custom-
ers: better service. The SmartTruck thus offers a so-
lution for one of the most important future chal-
lenges for the express business: the growing
complexity of logistics, especially in chronically con-
gested cities and megacities. That is a considerable
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