Shipping Consolidation System - Easy Shipping Company

Problem Scenario

Online shopping getting more and more popular because of the low price of the items being sold. The commodities are shipped to the customer address with express delivery services. However, the shipping cost of delivering single item with dedicated transportation is quite expensive. To cope with the issue, the consolidated shipment is a cost-effective way. Easy Shipping Company (ESC) is one of the companies that provide such service. To ensure that their clients track and pick the correct items to be consolidated, ESC encourages their clients to communicate with their staffs before every shipment is made. ESC will need to contact with different express delivery agents from all over the world.

Consolidated shipment is becoming popular as more people would like to receive their favourite goods with lower shipping cost. A ESC client will buy stuffs from online shops of different countries. As the number of shipment increased, there is pressure on ESC to handle the orders from clients in a promptly manner.

To keep their service quality, a Shipping Consolidation System (SCS) is to be developed for ESC so that clients can make sure that their favourite items are consolidated and being delivered as scheduled. The SCS is a web-based system with a common login interface for clients and ESC staffs. ESC will show available functions according to the privilege in user account.

Non-client must be registered before he/she become client who can make consolidated shipment of their items. The registration can be done by filling in an online registration form that contains client’s email address, password, name and mobile number. The system verifies if the email address is not used by other, if so, the system prompts the client for another email address. Otherwise, an activation code will be sent to the client’s mobile phone and the system asks the client to enter the code to activate his/her account. After the client enter the activation code, a welcome email is sent to the client.

Whenever the client buying items from different online shops, they should instruct the items to be sent to the ESC's collection point in the same city of the online shop. When the delivery order is ready, a delivery order tracking number will be generated and is given to the client. The client can login to SCS and add the item by inputting the tracking number and the name of the express delivery agent of that item.

Registration for non-clients

Client can login and check their items’ statuses via SCS to see if the items are delivered to the collection point. When the items are shipped to a particular collection point, the staff of that collection point will weight and measure the dimensions of the received item and then update the item details by entering the information.

When a client wants to place an order of consolidated shipment, he/she can login to SCS by entering the email and the password. Upon successful login, the client can select to start shipping consolidation, SCS will then display a list of received items available for consolidation. The client then picks the item that are going to be consolidated and submit to SCS. If there are items from collection points at different location, SCS prompts the client that the delivery time will be longer. After the items are selected, SCS asks for the type of delivery order. The order can be either a self-pickup order or a delivery to home order. If the client selects the self-pickup type, SCS displays list of available pickup points. If the delivery to home is selected, SCS then asks for the recipient’s name and select the shipping address from the registered list. The client can register a new shipping address at this point. After the pickup location is selected or shipping address is entered, SCS asks for the payment method. The client can select either pay on delivery or pay online. The client then presses “Start shipment” button to confirm. If pay online is selected, the payment will be processed with the appropriate payment gateway, however the payment process is beyond the scope of SCS. SCS saves the shipping order. SCS notifies the staff at collection points that a new order is received. The staff will pack the items and prepare to ship to the shipping address or the target pickup point. If items are collected at different locations, a deliver request will be sent to the shipping agents that can deliver the items to the collection point at the same city as the shipping address or target pickup point. Once all the items arrived the collection point that near the shipping address or target pickup point, the staff of that collection point update the system that the items are ready to ship and a delivery request will be sent to the shipping agent. The shipping agent then collect the items and ship out.

A client can login to the SCS and check the statuses of his/her consolidated shipping orders. SCS gets the latest information of the delivery order from the external information system of the shipping agent and return the list of orders with the statuses to the client. If the items are to be picked up at pickup point, when the items are delivered to the pickup point, the staff at pickup point will login SCS and update the order to ready to be picked up and SCS sends a notification SMS to the client. Otherwise, the shipping agent will phone the client for the delivery. Either case, the shipping agent login to SCS and update the order is delivered.

When client receives their items, the need to login to SCS and update the order is received.Task Specification According to the given problem scenario, perform the following tasks:

1. Identify all actors of SCS and write the actor descriptions for each actor.

2. Draw a use case diagram of SCS. Show all use cases, actors, communication links between actors and use cases, and <> / <> relationships between use cases.

3. Prepare Initial Use Case Descriptions for all base use cases in your answer to Task 2.

4. Prepare the Base Use Case Descriptions for all use cases related to the process of placing an order of consolidated shipment. Show the include relationship(s) in your use case descriptions if necessary.

5. Perform textual analysis to identify the candidate classes for the complete system and prepare a data dictionary for all candidate classes.

6. Draw a class diagram to show the relationships among the classes found in Task 5. Show names and attributes of classes, inheritances (if any) between classes, named associations between classes, and multiplicities of the associations between classes.

7. Draw separate 3-tier sequence diagrams for the following scenario: (a) A normal scenario in which a client successfully places and order. (i.e. the happy path) (b) An alternate scenario in which a client places and order only after he/she attempts a second trial in online payment (failed the first time in online payment). (You should have separate UI objects and controller objects for front-end and back-end flows such as logging-in and reservation flows.)

8. Draw state machine diagram(s) for all control objects for the use case(s) related to the process of placing an order of consolidated shipment.

9. Refine the class diagram for Task 6 with the information from the sequence diagram(s) of Task 7 for SCS. Show all additional classes, methods and associations identified from the sequence diagrams.