VOLKSWAGEN Commercial Vehicles is working with logistics firm Hermes to optimise the delivery of parcels and to help delivery staff with their work.
Following a pilot scheme in Germany with development specialist Neohelden, the system is being tested by multiple drivers on real delivery rounds in East London during March.
After a record year for the courier and parcel delivery sector in Germany with an estimated volume of over four billion parcels nationwide the sector is looking at innovations like the assistance app ‘Neo’. This can be operated by voice control and touchscreen and provides relevant information on the next delivery both in spoken format and visually.
The benefit for the drivers: they see and hear during their round what’s coming up, have all orders to hand displayed as a list and can select the next delivery by touch or voice command. If they wish, they can have the system read out the most relevant details about the next delivery, such as recipient name, address, type of delivery, any particular place where the parcel should be left and any preferred neighbour to leave it with.
Thanks to voice control the delivery staff member is also able to easily ask for further details about each item on the job list. The aim is to save a significant amount of time in the area of the delivery address and to ease the challenging workload, especially at times with high parcel volume, rush-hour traffic or at unknown destinations.
This digital assistance could help in coping with the sector’s growth. Lynsey Aston, Head of Product, Innovation and Onboarding at Hermes UK, said: “Our network of over 27,000 couriers are working hard to deliver ever-increasing volumes driven by the natural growth of e-commerce. On top of that, the pandemic has seen our volumes soar to more than 630 million parcels over the last year and we’ve grown our teams and network of self-employed couriers, which has meant a lot of new starters to onboard, fast.
“Anything that helps us to do this quicker and supports our couriers in delivering more safely and efficiently is really important, so we’re excited to be part of this trial in partnership with our Innovation Lab team.”
As one of 180 entrants from all over Europe in the Future Logistics Challenge run by Hermes and Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles to find the most promising solutions in the areas of ‘Delivery Driver Experience’ and ‘Smart Delivery Vehicles’, Neohelden came out top alongside one other project of start-up Viscopic.
