DHL Parcel Germany announced that it will equip 450 parcel delivery vehicles with a new navigationsystem, NiZA (Navigation in Delivery and Pickup) by summer 2009 enabling the company to reduce
labour costs, fuel consumption and CO2 emissions.NiZA was developed in-house at the Group to ensure that new employees not yet familiar withthe area can find their destinations. In addition, DHL expects drivers to use less fuel as theywill reach their destinations without any detours with the new system. This would result in fewerCO2 emissions, DHL Parcel Germany said.
In contrast to normal navigation systems, the parcel delivery agent does not have to entereach destination manually in NiZA. As part of standard procedure, each parcel is scanned when thevehicle is loaded in the morning. This information is relayed to a computer in the data center inPrague, which then requires only a few minutes to determine the optimum sequence of deliverydestinations. The list is sent to the delivery agent’s parcel scanning device, from where it istransmitted to the navigation equipment in the vehicle that maps out the actual route.
The device is more expensive than mobile navigation solutions. “In exchange, however, itoffers numerous advantages,” explained Monika Strauß and Thomas Möller, who are responsible for theNiZA project. “It calculates five routes in advance, making it faster than conventional devices.NiZA also functions in tunnels and has a more readable display,” they added. In addition, thedevice displays information about the parcels onboard that makes it easier for the delivery agentto find them in the vehicle.
DHL Parcel Germany expects that the essential investment made in the NiZa project will beamortized in the mid-term future as drivers will require less time for delivery and don’t have towork overtime.
Meanwhile, the DHL Innovation Centre is working on a more advanced version of NiZA as part ofits Smart Truck project. While NiZA calculates the delivery sequence just once in the morning,Smart Truck updates the route during the course of the day to account for changing conditions suchas new orders.
Boris Paul , the project Manager of Smart Truck, explained: “We also take other parameterssuch as the current traffic situation or changes in the order level into account. As a result,Smart Truck is even more dynamic than NiZA.” A Smart Truck pilot project with two vehicles and 16routes from DHL Express Germany will be launched in the first quarter of 2009.
