Future of parcel tracking

Through the Parcel & Pipeline Visibility project, we have added smart tags to our mobile equipment so we can have a live UK-wide digital view of where everything is in the network. These smart tags look like small stickers but are actually tiny computers that transmit their location to nearby Bluetooth devices called Readers.

We’re proud to say we’re the first postal company in the world to have introduced this new ground-breaking technology into its network.

What is the potential of this technology for Royal Mail?

The benefit we’re already seeing with this technology is york tracking. We have tagged over 890k yorks and can see where each one is at any given moment. This helped us massively over peak with getting unused yorks to where they were needed.

We’re now looking at how we use this capability to not only track where the york is in our network but also what parcels have been sorted to the york, and where it is on its journey through our network. This process is called containerisation.

How does Containerisation work?

Containerisation is achieved by using the PDAs to register a York’s smart tag barcode in the system and then scanning the individual items going into the york. The system will link the items and the york together, and then we have visibility of where those items are and where they’re going as they move through the network.

What are the benefits of containerisation?

Containerisation is already in use across both Super Hubs and ensures Mail Centres know how much work to expect to receive, on which vehicle, and in which specific york. We’re now rolling this out in Mail Centres.

Containerisation will allow Mail Centres to provide accurate parcel forecasts across the network meaning Outward to Inward receiving Mail Centres will have much better visibility of the number of yorks and parcels arriving on a specific vehicle.

Inward Plants to Delivery offices will also be able to provide much better visibility of what's coming their way each day and more accurate reported volumes and workload.

What are Mail Centres doing?

Through February, all our Processing sites will be fully embedding containerisation in their manual work areas via the PDA while maintaining the high performance seen to date from the Mech capability now fully deployed. If any of our Processing colleagues need further support, please reach out, and we will look to help you with any barriers to getting this fully deployed.

For the remaining 14 Mail Centres that are due to deploy manual containerisation throughout Feb, the deployment team will be on hand to give them the support they need over the coming weeks to ensure this is fully embedded and becomes the way we do things.

The Parcel & Pipeline Visibility project is a much-needed step we need to take into the future to better compete in the parcels market and to give our customers the quality service they deserve.

Better services and improved products mean happier customers and happier customers mean growth for Royal Mail.

We’ll keep you up to date with our progress on rolling this out, but a massive thank you to our Processing colleagues who are working with our deployment teams to help make this project a success. It's only by us all doing this properly, embedding this change and pulling together on it that we can bring the benefits to our operation and our customers.