Wachemo University

College of Engineering & Technology

School of Computing & Informatics
Department of Information Systems
Project Title : Online Ethiopian Postal Service And Customer Support System

Group Members:

Full Name ID

1. Kalkidan Girma ……………………………………… 1200365

2. Adugna Itana………………………………………..1200138

Submission Date: 13-4-2015 E.C

Content page

1.1.Introduction …………………………………………………………… 1
1.2. Background …………………………………………………………... 1
1.3.Statement of Problem………………………………………………… 2
1.4.Objective ……………………………………………………………… 3
1.4.1.General Objective………………………………………………. .. 3
1.4.2.Specific Objective ………………………………………………... 3
1.5. Proposed System ……………………………………………………. 3
1.6. Literature Review and Related Work …………………………….. 4
1.7.Scope and Limitation ……………………………………………….. 4
1.8. Methods and Tools …………………………………………………. 5
1.8.1.Data Source and Data Collection Methods ……………………. 5
1.8.2. System Analysis and Design Methods………………………….. 6
1.8.3. System Implementation Methods and How to use Methods …. 6
1.8.4.Development Environment and Programming Tools………….. 6
1.9.Significance of the Project …………………………………………… 7
1.10.Beneficiaries of the System or Application………………………… 7
1.11.Feasibility Study…………………………………………………… 8
1.11.1. Technical Feasibility …………………………………………… 8
1.11.2.Economic Feasibility…………………………………………….. 8
1.11.3.Operational feasibility…………………………………………. 8
1.11.4.Legal Feasibility…………………………………………………. 9
1.12.Project Plan…………………………………………………………. 9
1.12.1. Time Schedule………………………………………………….. 9
1.12.2. Budget Plan……………………………………………………. 10
1 Introduction
1.1 Introduction
The origin of postal service dates back to the middle Ages and was developed from the
medieval system of royal messengers whom employed to carry government documents from
one place to another. In most countries, the postal service developed in the 18th century when
different means of transport such as mules, horses, camels and stage-caches were used to
carry mail. In some Middle-Eastern countries even falcons were specially trained to carry
written messages from one place to another. The first railway mails were carried in Europe in
1830. The establishment of the Universal Postal Union (UPU) in 1875 is what greatly
promoted international mail services.
Prior to the establishment of the postal service in Ethiopia on March 9, 1894 following
an imperial edict, correspondence was conducted through messengers.
These tough individuals travelled great distances, often on foot, overcoming rough landscape
and weathering hostile climate. They endured the pangs of hunger and thirst and carried their
letters over their heads, on cleft sticks (which later became the symbol of the post office still
today) until they reached their destination.
1.2Background Organization and System
Ethiopian Postal Service was established nearly two decades after the birth of UPU. The
second half of the 19th century in Ethiopia was characterized by the establishment and
consolidation of the empire state under the protection of Emperor Menelik. Menelik found in
the postal service, like the telephone and the telegraph, a vital means of exchanging
information, first for political and administrative purposes and later on for public
correspondence.
The construction of the Djibouti - Addis Ababa train made it possible for letters,
parcels and merchandise, which were previously transported on camel back. This was a
crucial factor that greatly improved the pace and efficiency of the postal service while it laid
the basis for the international exchange of mail. Then Ethiopia became a member of the
Universal Postal Union in 1908.
Ethiopia has at present 1139 post offices. Out of this 746 Permanent post offices,130
Departmental sub-post offices, 261 Sub-post offices and 2 Visiting postmen in rural areas
and over 170000 post boxes. It is estimated that one post office is serving 79016 inhabitants
while one private box serves 529 people.

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 In the result of opportunities and challenges, Ethiopian postal service establishes EMS
(express mail service) in 1989. The introduction of EMS has made the Ethiopian Postal
Service competitive in the express delivery market. Today Ethiopian postal service is under
the implementation of business process engineering (BPR), which had been study for 18
months. Due to this the structure become process and customer oriented. The managers and
the employees are doing their best to accomplish the needs of their customers.
1.1 Statement of problem
In fact, Ethiopian postal service is one of the most crucial as well as backbone of the people
by giving postal related services as well as any other services which can be transfer through
postal system, still the system generally does follow or perform the manual system or paper
based system and somewhat automated to provide service to its customers. So that using
manual system has a lot of problems in many cases.
Moreover, the following are problems that are present in the current system of postal
service system in general. Because of this reason the organization faced to many problems.
The problems are
 Work load of the Employers is very high means takes much time to perform simple
tasks,
 Takes time to retrieve data,

 Difficult to update data,

 Wastage of resources,

 Needs more space to store file cabinet,

 Loss of data and poor organized and unsecured data. This also leads to Security
problem not protect the data from an unauthorized person and doesn’t keep the
organizations’ safety.
 Date or time limitation problem in which the system doesn’t keep track of sending
and receiving different materials deliver in the customers’ expected time and date.
Example, postponing the expected time or date.
N.B: The problems that raised in the above limit the organization not to give reliable and fast
service to its customers.

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1.2 Objective
It have two objective ,these are General Objective and specific objective
1.2.1 General Objective
The purpose of the Ethiopian postal service is to allow a portal for mail acceptance, transfer
deliveries and other postal services for its customers. The act of allowing these services to
take place initially started as a need for the Ethiopian people to communicate on a nationwide
scale. Ethiopian postal service was created by Law with the view to establish and
promote Postal Services based on the development.

1.2.2 Specific Objective

The specific objectives are listed below:-
 To minimize resources
 To minimize the time consumption and work load for both the organization
and customers
 To minimize the data storage space
 To encourage data security
 To design central and well-structured database management system
 To eliminate redundancy of data
 To make online with web based application through an internet connection.
 To keep truck mails.
 Communicating branch organizations each other internationally.
1.5. Proposed System
In this proposed system we have tasks to do and needs to fulfil this project currently, where
the technological innovations and the use of computerized and mobilized systems are highly
being increasing from time to time, the knowledge of mobile and computers and knowing
how to operate with them is very much important.
We prefer to make a web based system

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1.6. Literature Review and Related Work
Based on the discussion with quality and security department of the Ethiopian postal service
department on time delivery is basically all about delivery on agreed time which is within 48
hours after acceptance (is about punctuality instead of speed, percentage of all deliveries on
time and deliveries at the desired time windows at acceptable cost) and completeness and
accuracy of orders delivered which is all about quality of delivery and it may include
(received quantity corresponds with delivered quantity, avoiding loosing of goods to maintain
delivery obligation, very low rate of returns due to shipment damage & shipment errors and
percentage of accurate deliveries). In addition to this on time a package is considered on time
if tracking information is recorded within 48 hours of entering the shipment confirmation.
1.7. Scope and Limitation
a. Scope
Scope of this project means the boundary that we are performing tasks in this project.
The proposed system that we will try to automate is limited and bounded on the Ethiopian
postal services. It will perform how to:-
 Track management that checks the sent messages of customers through
their user account
 Rent post box services
 Manipulate information
 Store data in data base
 Automate and make online service
 Mail management
b .Limitation
The Ethiopian postal service system provides services to its customers using manual system
and somewhat automated to provide service to its customers. Due to this reason the systems
have the following drawbacks:-
 It take much time to perform a single task
 The system cannot seek the given data
 It is no cascading sheet style but it simply implemented by frame
 The system does not performing tracking well
 Take time to retrieve data
 It need more space to store files or cabinets

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1.8 Methods and Tools
1.8.1 Data Source and Data collection Methods
There are many source of Data :
 Data gathering
 Approach

Data gathering
To gather the requirement of the system we use different types of fact finding methods
those are:-
Interview
To know how the postal service system is work, we prepared questions concerning on
postal service and interviewed the counter and manager of Hossanna town post office. The
counter is person who performs managing the all transactions inside the post office, as well
as the manager is a person who controls and manages the overall system. He also called
postmaster. So from the manager we gained the overall description of the system, and from
the counter we gained how the postal service transactions are going on.
Observation
By observing the current working environment of Hossanna post office, we collect data
which necessary for automating of Hossanna postal service system. In our observation we
have tried to observe things mentioned below
 The general system of providing service in the current system.

 How the system handles and store material’s information.

 Types of document format is there printed or non-printed

Approach
We have selected an Object Oriented Approach. Because of Object-oriented Approach
takes pride in its suitability for sustaining huge software and web development projects.
This is a far better option than using structured Approach when you have massive code
bases. The nature of object-oriented programs allows the developer to save a lot of time
and energy when developing programs as the components of the programs are in the form
of objects which can be plugged into the program wherever they are needed.

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1.8.2 System Analysis and Design Methods
 System Analysis: - requirement engineering like use case model
object model etc.
 System Design: - physical data base design like physical data base
design, design elements, design system architectures, design
component.
1.8.3 System Implementation Methods and How to use Methods
Implementation is a realization of a technical specification or algorithm as a program,
software component through programming. there are different types of tools available to
implement the system from those tools we select php to develop front end of the system,
Xamp2.5 server to develop back end of the system ,UML editor to sketch different UML
diagrams and Microsoft word 2010 to prepare the documentation part of the project .

1.8.4 Development Environment and Programming Tools

The development method we are using to develop the proposed system is the Waterfall
approach.
Waterfall Methodology: All projects can be managed better when segmented into a
hierarchy of chunks such as phases, stages, activities, tasks and steps.
Programming Tools
The tools that we are going to use throughout our project are listed in the following table as
grouped into hardware tools & software tools.
Table a) development tools

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 Tools
Hardware
 Processor: Intel(R) core(TM).i3-
2120cpu@3.30GHZ
 Flash Disk : at minimum 8GB
 RAM : to the maximum of 1.90GB
 Hard Disk: to the maximum of
464.6GB
 CD-R : to the maximum of 700MB
Software
 Microsoft 2010 :to write the entire documents
 Power point 2010 :for presentation for both
phase1 and phase 2
 Wamp server 2.5 :To run the site on the tool
bar
 npp.6.5.5.Installer : To edit the entire
implementation code
 SQL database server: To store data
 Visual paradigm for UML 10.2 : to draw
UML diagrams

1.9 Significance of the project

The proposed project has many benefits. Those are listed below:-
 Speed up the system
 Perform data updating easily
 Reduce resource wastage
 Protect data/files from unauthorized users
 Reduce work load of the employee of the organization
 Enable the organization to has centralized DBMS
1.10 Beneficiaries of the System Or Application
Since our project is the Ethiopian Postal service and it is the most crucial service for the
people, it has a basic purpose that communicating the customers throughout the world giving
service by considering the following things.
 Through real and customers expected time.
 Using less amount of resource.
 Using less amount of human power.
 Through customers information based.
 By using fast and efficient technology.
 By providing how customers check their materials or any messages they have sent
and they do a truck where it reaches.
 By communicating customers with the organizations' employee through online.

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  And all branch organizations are communicating each other through online network.

1.11 Feasibility Study

Feasibility study is a study that determines whether a proposed system is technically,
financially, and operationally viable.
Preliminary Investigation is the first phase in any system developing life cycle. The
Feasibility Study is a major part of this phase.
Feasibility Study means selecting the best system that meet the performance requirement.
The feasible development of the software is going to be in terms of the following aspects:
1.11.1 Technical Feasibility Study
The system to be developed by using technologically system development techniques such
as
asp.net, Java script,CSS and MYSQL database server without any problems and the group
members have enough capability to develop the project. So the system will be technically
feasible.

1.11.2 Economic Feasibility Study

The purpose of the economic feasibility assessment is to determine the positive economic
benefits to the organization that the proposed system will provide. It includes quantification
and identification of all the benefits expected. This assessment typically involves a cost/
benefits analysis.
1.11.3 Operational Feasibility Study
Operational feasibility it measures the degree of how much the proposed system reduce the
existing system problems.
The system to be developed will provide accurate, active, secured service and decreases labor
of workers and also it is not limited to particular groups or body. And also it is plat form
independent i.e. it run’s in all operating system

1.11.4 legal Feasibility Study

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The system to be developed is not conflict with any government directives, because it gives
services for the people effectively and efficiently, all the stakeholders also agreed before the
system developed. So the citizen is profitable and the system will be politically feasible.
1.12. Project plan
A project plan defines project goals and objectives, specifies tasks and how goals will be
achieved, identifies what resources will be needed and associated budgets and timelines for
completion. A project plan defines all work in a project and identifies who will do it
1.12.1 Time Schedule

no task Duration Nov. Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr

2015 2015 2015 2015 2015 2015
Two Three Four 2 2 2
Weeks weeks weeks weeks weeks weeks

1 Information
gathering
7 day

2 Project
information and
3 days
planning

3 Project Analysis 4 days

4 project design 2 days

5 Project
Implementation
5 days

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1.12.2 Budget Plan

no Quantity Total price(birr)

1 Computer and laptop Computer and laptop free

2 Printing 200~300

3 Ms visual studio free

4 Visio free

5 Ms office free

6 paper 100

7 MySQL database server free

8 Xamp server free

9 Notepad++ free

10 Ed-row max free

TOTAL ~400

REFERANCE

Software engineering books and handouts

Modular programming objects
Websites of Ethio postal system(www.ethiopianpostal.com)

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