National Postcodes to be introduced

Splinter

But the query will only work based on the sorting offices in the area. It's not actually going to be able to tell you who's on a street or block without you having the full address.

Sequential benefits courier companies, or even food delivery companies in that they can route plan more effectively.

ukoda

Splinter wrote: »

But the query will only work based on the sorting offices in the area. It's not actually going to be able to tell you who's on a street or block without you having the full address.

Sequential benefits courier companies, or even food delivery companies in that they can route plan more effectively.

No thats totally incorrect, read the product guide for eircode that i posted a few pages back

If you have the eircode you can get the full address plus any alias address and any other info you want, including geo coordinates. it has nothing to do with sorting offices

you can route plan far more effectively if you integrate eircode to your system.


If we were still back in 1960, yes sequestial would help as youd have no software or sat navs. today, its not an issue

SpaceTime

You'd be surprised.

Many small delivery operators have no such software and plan routes fairly manually.

ukoda

SpaceTime wrote: »

You'd be surprised.

Many small delivery operators have no such software and plan routes fairly manually.

they can still do that.... or they can make an investment in software to help their business

and ive yet to get an actually example of how sequential system would help a person in any day to day scenario

SpaceTime

You can manually group parcels in a van for example.

How will a van driver even be able to group and sort stuff unless you've software that prints new labels ?

Not everything revolves around database access and advanced levels of automation.

Being able to intuitively read a code is a very useful feature for something like this.

Bear in mind Ireland hasn't always got house or building numbers so, is not going to be any easier to do that.

Yeah it's possible but it's far from industry norm and mostly the codes will only be useful for high level sorting.

For local level delivery they're pretty unintuitive and not very useful.

The delivery company would have to relabel all the packages with route sequences or something so the driver could quickly ascertain which codes relate to which street.

From reading the package there's no more info than already on the address : vague area / district .

ukoda

SpaceTime wrote: »

You can manually group parcels in a van for example.

How will a van driver even be able to group and sort stuff unless you've software that prints new labels ?

Not everything revolves around database access and advanced levels of automation.

Being able to intuitively read a code is a very useful feature for something like this.

Bear in mind Ireland hasn't always got house or building numbers so, is not going to be any easier to do that.

oh for god sake...the address will be on the parcel too. he can still group by street/townland/housing estate

SpaceTime

ukoda wrote: »

oh for god sake...the address will be on the parcel too. he can still group by street/townland/housing estate

And Irish addresses as we all know are as useful as a chocolate teapot and read like a short Shakespearian sonnet.

The whole point was a code overlay that would solve this WITHOUT redesigning the whole addressing system thus keeping colloquial old somewhat useleas addressing format by completely bypassing it.

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gives up and concludes government is just completely incompetent.

ukoda

SpaceTime wrote: »

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gives up and concludes government is just completely incompetent.

They are! and in general i dont think Capita are a good company tbh. but i still argue that eircode isnt a disaster. Its quite useful if people calm down and think about it

i dont buy this "has to be sequential stuff". i think thats people thinking about postcodes with a 1960 view and not a modern view

Sam Russell

It is the actual format of the code that is at fault.

The first bit is too short. D04 is a very large area. XXXX is inpenetrable to a human.

Making the first bit 5 digits long, and the second bit three characters long, we would have a first part long enough to identify a cluster of postcodes of less than 100 addresses, which for most people would be a code they would happily use. If it used the phone number system format as a guide the most people would have an idea where the cluster was located in the country. That alone would be a head start.

I think everyone knows 01 is dublin with 021 is Cork and 061 is Limerick. Currently, except for the Dublin postcodes (D1, D2, D4, etc.) there is no public information. The launch could be in two phases. The first 5 digits, followed when it was considered useful, the last three characters. In urban areas, the 5 digit code takes you down to 100 or so metres, while in remote areas, it might be to a Km. Useful for the delivery of parcels and for a fire-engine.

I cannot envisage how the proposed Eircode system coud be used by a van-delivery outfit without equipement supplied for every person involved. Licence fees alone would rule it out.

SpaceTime

The only way it could possibly work is that the van delivery company comes up with its own internal codes for routes, or uses Loc8 or something similar and then translates all the Eircodes to that and sticks new labels on the packages.

The code on the package is basically completely useless to anyone who isn't plugged into a database all the time.

It might work for the very big operators who have that kind of hand-held technology, but for anyone else, it's not really ideal.

SpaceTime

What I would say is that I'd rather this be rolled out RIGHT rather than just a rushed job or for the sake of pushing forward because they've gone too far with the wrong system.

If we get this wrong we're stuck with it for at least half a century.

Sam Russell

SpaceTime wrote: »

What I would say is that I'd rather this be rolled out RIGHT rather than just a rushed job or for the sake of pushing forward because they've gone too far with the wrong system.

If we get this wrong we're stuck with it for at least half a century.

I hope that is not the case. We managed to re-do the phone numbers, and even did it gradually. The TV system has been changed and the radio service has been revamped (a bit). The actual code could be changed quite easily if it is a 0ne-for-one swap.

Life changes quicker these days. However, it is better RIGHT than right-now.

SpaceTime

Sam Russell wrote: »

I hope that is not the case. We managed to re-do the phone numbers, and even did it gradually. The TV system has been changed and the radio service has been revamped (a bit). The actual code could be changed quite easily if it is a 0ne-for-one swap.

Life changes quicker these days. However, it is better RIGHT than right-now.

The phone numbering system's largely unchanged for probably 50 years at least. The basic structure emerged in the late 50s and all that happened was new area codes, longer numbers and then rationalisation of area codes to make bigger ones.

It's been divided into those regions for a very long time.

yuloni

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a65b2cd

Yes, it is a very good and logical structure but these guys want sequential codes and commonality at street level and they are talking about that enabling them to save tens of millions:

... [Mr. Neil McDonnell:] The companies here today span the freight, parcel and energy sectors. Delivery to Irish homes and businesses is their day job. They know what they are talking about and they estimate that savings in the order of tens of millions of euro annually can be passed to the public via an efficient postcode system.

So let us say that saving would be say 10% of their total costs so their businesses have costs of hundreds of millions wow!

yuloni

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Bray Head

I am totally unconvinced by the costs argument as put forward by the industry. I looked at some CSO data (I cannot post a link as I am a 'new user')

Turnover by the road transport industry (NACE code 4941) was 2.4bn in 2012. Purchases (this includes essentially all costs bar wages) was a full 1.6bn. An eircode license cost in the low thousands is barely going to make a difference to these firms' cost base.

The CSO data show wages are in the region of 400m for the industry. The data don't make it clear but let's make a conservative estimate that a quarter of purchases are on fuel, so another 400m. You will only need very small productivity improvements relating to this 800m bill on fuel and wages to make an eircode license worthwhile.

This is how UPS and FedEx have grown their market share and made a lot of customers since the 1980s. A lot of investment in route optimisation software (eircode will make a huge difference with this). They even design uniforms so that the driver's pen is on the opposite side to what he writes with as when they studied it they found that it speeds up the signing process for the customer.

Some firms in Ireland clearly want to persist with a low-cost, low-margin, low-productivity business model. If this is what they want fair enough, but it's not a valid reason for opposing eircode. My own suspicion is that the arrival of eircode will make a lot of local knowledge that exists in their workers' heads redundant. This will make it easier for other firms to enter the market and damage the incumbent business model.

Bray Head

SpaceTime wrote: »

You'd be surprised.

Many small delivery operators have no such software and plan routes fairly manually.

The quill pen is a functional way of writing and is superior to scratching things on rocks. But no one uses quill pens any more as we have fountain pens, biros, and keyboards which are much cheaper.

What do you think is the future for firms that fail to adopt technologies that could boost their productivity substantially?

Tow

Bray Head wrote: »

Some firms in Ireland clearly want to persist with a low-cost, low-margin, low-productivity business model. If this is what they want fair enough, but it's not a valid reason for opposing eircode. My own suspicion is that the arrival of eircode will make a lot of local knowledge that exists in their workers' heads redundant. This will make it easier for other firms to enter the market and damage the incumbent business model.

It is the companied who employ their own driver or two for local deliveries who will loose out with the current proposed system. The they wont pay the costs to computerise their delivery system, and subscribe to eircode.

SpaceTime

Bray Head wrote: »

The quill pen is a functional way of writing and is superior to scratching things on rocks. But no one uses quill pens any more as we have fountain pens, biros, and keyboards which are much cheaper.

What do you think is the future for firms that fail to adopt technologies that could boost their productivity substantially?

The problem is that these firms work to standard business models.

You're expecting a van driver to key every code on every item to figure our what order they need to be delivered in and provinding them with no way of doing that without accessing a database.

For small delivery companies and subcontractors this means the system is very limited in what it can be used for.

The best case scenario would be that they have to translate the eircode into something meaningful to the driver first and apply labels to every item.

That's adding huge amounts of double handling that isn't necessary in other markets where a driver can clearly see which items need to be grouped by glancing at the postal codes.

The system really needs to be machine friendly and human friendly.

You've also created a situation where everyone will be tied into a monopoly database supplier.
If costs are too high or the technology is poorly implemented that's a huge problem too.

Bray Head

Tow wrote: »

It is the companied who employ their own driver or two for local deliveries who will loose out with the current proposed system. The they wont pay the costs to computerise their delivery system, and subscribe to eircode.

Then they are no worse off than using the current Irish address system which we are all agreed is poor quality.

Other firms who are prepared to computerise and subscribe to eircode may be able to compete with them though........

Bray Head

SpaceTime wrote: »

That's adding huge amounts of double handling that isn't necessary in other markets where a driver can clearly see which items need to be grouped by glancing at the postal codes.

Say you have 10 packages to deliver scattered over rural Mayo (a very empty place) over the course of a day. Is there really a coding system (related to grid squares or the like) that a driver could use to intuitively navigate with? If so I would be keen to see an example!

SpaceTime wrote: »

You've also created a situation where everyone will be tied into a monopoly database supplier.

Some goods are inevitably monopoly goods. It is common in network industries. Should we have multiple postcode systems with different characteristics? Even if we did, users would still have to subscribe to all of them!

The main thing about eircode as I understand it is that Capita has a monopoly on supply for a discrete period of time. The code itself and the right to use it remains public property. Contrast this with An Post, Irish Rail, etc, where the monopoly is essentially indefinite.

yuloni

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Bray Head

yuloni wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

Thank you for this example. I think your point is valid. I agree Loc8 has merits in the context of deliveries but as we know there are multiple uses to postcodes. These have been debated over and back on the thread multiple times and I don't want to re-hash them.

Let's go back to the incumbent/entrant issue. I had said that in the transport business there are low-productivity firms who can keep competition at bay because of local knowledge that potential entrants to the market don't possess. And that eircodes will make a lot of that local knowledge redundant.

Suppose you're a successful home heating oil company in a rural area. Your business involves driving around to a lot of one-off houses. Despite their non-specific addresses you get to know where your customers are after a while. This local knowledge is an important part of your business model. After a while you decide to expand into an adjacent area (also rural). Your problem is that it is difficult to gain ground against the incumbent firms because you have to waste a lot of time either getting lost and/or on the phone to customers finding out where they are.

With eircode and a satnav it will become much easier to do business in rural Ireland. This is why incumbent firms don't like it.

SpaceTime

Google Maps is kind of making a lot coding pointless anyway.

I can put in :

Housename / Business Name and rough location into Google Maps and most of the time get a 100% accurate location.

tvc15

SpaceTime wrote: »

Google Maps is kind of making a lot coding pointless anyway.

I can put in :

Housename / Business Name and rough location into Google Maps and most of the time get a 100% accurate location.

If every address was an urban address I would agree, as someone with an address that Google can't find, I disagree!

spuddy

Spotted this quote in an Irish Times piece, don't recall seeing it mentioned elsewhere

The code has two elements, the first is three digits: letter, number, number, which is a route key, based on the national road network, identifying the area. The second is a random, four-digit mix of letters...

National road network?

larchill

Based on National Roads? Hadn't heard that before! This is at variance to what eircode say: "not directly linked to counties, towns or any other geographic boundaries". Also, Dublin 6W is: "with the single exception of D6W for the Dublin 6W postal district"! This article doesn't quiet have it right.:(

my3cents

I think based on the national road network means they have created routing codes that try not to cut roads in half unless they have to.

You might geographically have a road that goes over a river but the end of the road will be the routing code boundary and not the river.

Curly Judge

The national press seem to be taking an interest in this at last :



http://www.irishexaminer.com/viewpoints/analysis/eircode-could-become-next-irish-water-297037.html



http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/devil-is-in-the-detail-of-new-postcode-system-1.1994401?page=2