White Glove Partner / Final Mile Facility Selection

Owned by James Seabrook
Last updated: Jun 29, 2022
2 min read

Selection of Relevant White Glove Partners based on Regions

Each White Glove Partner has an agreement with SEKO which covers the country they are in, the regions which they cover and the zone in which each region exists. Zones are used for costing of the work and is usually based on the distance from the Final Mile Facility to the customer address.

Database Structure

The following tables are required:

Countries & Postal Regions

Each country has a set of postal code regions, in a specific format. When postal code regions are added to Final Mile Facilities they must be in the correct format, based on that specified within the country.

Storage

  • Countries

  • Postal region codes

  • Postal region formats within countries

Final Mile Facilities

Final Mile Facilities are based in a country and don’t cross over countries, Therefore what has to be stored is regarding each facility is the organisation (with country), the different locations, the zones which are covered and the postcodes in each zone.

Storage

  • Final Mile Facility Organisation Code (type = “White Glove Partner”) including country

  • Final Mile Facility Location Code (type = “Final Mile Facility”)

    • Zones comprising list of Postal Regions, formatted to allow matching against one customer region. Each region must exist in the Country Postal Regions table)

      • Zone 1 list of Postal Regions

      • Zone 2 List of Postal Regions

      • Zone 3 List of Postal Regions

  • Contact information to attach to organisations and locations.

Algorithm for Final Mile Facility Selection

Given a customer postal address in a specific country, the following should happen:

  1. Find any final mile facilities which match the postal code

  2. Sort the result set by zones, in zone order ascending

  3. Selection should be in the following order:

    1. If there is one matching Final Mile Facility in Zone 1 it is selected automatically

    2. If there is more than one matching Final Mile Facility in Zone 1 it is open to be selected manually

    3. If there is one matching Final Mile Facility in Zone 2 it is selected automatically

    4. If there is more than one matching Final Mile Facility in Zone 2 it is open to be selected manually

    5. If there is one matching Final Mile Facility in Zone 3 it is selected automatically

    6. If there is more than one matching Final Mile Facility in Zone 3 it is open to be selected manually

Maintenance Screens

For maintenance to work correctly the following Maintenance Screens must be available

  • Country / Postal Regions

  • Final Mile Facilities

  • Matching parameters

    • Country

    • Number of characters to match

Clarification Required on Postal Code region matching

Set of parameters required for each country about what postal code regions to match on with the number of digits to be considered in the matching. If it is not simply a region (eg. Ireland, UK) how does it work?