Pack & Ship Service - Business Capabilities

Service Overview: The Pack & Ship Service orchestrates packing operations, integrates with carrier systems for label generation and rate shopping, and manages the final stages of order fulfillment before shipment.

Architecture: Hexagonal Architecture (Ports & Adapters) Technology Stack: Spring Boot 3.2, PostgreSQL, Redis, Apache Kafka, Multi-carrier APIs Domain Model: Event-driven with carrier integration abstractions

L1: Pack & Ship Orchestration

L1.1: Strategic Value

• Speed: 30% faster pack times with guided workflows
• Cost Optimization: 15% shipping cost reduction via rate shopping
• Accuracy: 99.9% shipping label accuracy
• Carrier Flexibility: Integration with 10+ carriers

L2: Core Capabilities

L2.1: Packing Station Management

• Multi-station orchestration and assignment
• Real-time station status monitoring
• Workload balancing across stations
• Material consumption tracking (boxes, tape, dunnage)

L2.2: Carrier Integration & Rate Shopping

• Real-time rate comparison across carriers
• Service level selection (ground, express, overnight)
• Dimensional weight calculations
• Carrier API abstraction layer

L2.3: Label & Documentation Generation

• Shipping label printing (thermal, PDF)
• Commercial invoice generation for international
• Packing slip creation
• Manifest generation for carrier pickup

L2.4: Quality Verification

• Weight verification against expected
• Dimension validation
• Shipping address verification
• Hazmat compliance checking

Key Metrics

• Packs per hour per station: 40-60
• Label generation success rate: 99.9%
• Rate shopping response time: < 2 seconds
• Shipping accuracy: 99.95%

Performance Targets

• Packing task creation: < 150ms
• Rate shopping API call: < 1.5 seconds
• Label generation: < 500ms
• System availability: 99.9%