Core Concepts and Terminology
What this domain tests
Vocabulary precision. Items frequently hinge on distinguishing two terms that sound interchangeable in casual speech - transit time versus dwell time, acceptance versus induction, mis-sort versus mis-delivery. If you cannot define a term in one sentence, you cannot eliminate distractors reliably.
The operational chain, in order
- Acceptance - the item is taken from the customer and enters the network; prohibited-item and address checks belong here.
- Induction - the item enters a specific facility's sortation flow and receives its first facility scan.
- Sortation - routing to an outbound lane by destination code; a wrong lane is a mis-sort, not a loss.
- Linehaul - transport between facilities. Last mile is the final delivery leg.
- Delivery confirmation / proof of delivery - the record that closes the item's lifecycle.
Metrics language
- Transit time: acceptance to delivery.
- Dwell time: how long an item sits at one point without moving. Long dwell with normal transit means the delay was absorbed inside a facility.
- First-pass yield: the share of items sorted correctly without rework.
- Chain of custody: the unbroken record of who held the item, when, and at which scan point.
Worked example
"A parcel leaves the origin hub Monday, reaches the destination hub Wednesday, and is delivered Friday." Transit time is Monday–Friday; dwell at the destination hub is Wednesday–Friday. Four-day transit with one-day dwell points to a transport problem; four-day transit with three-day dwell points to a facility problem. Naming the correct metric is usually the whole question.
Traps that cost marks
- Treating any scan event as proof of physical possession; only custody-transfer scans do that.
- Calling a mis-sort a lost item - it is a routing exception with a known code.
- Confusing an exception code (what happened) with a resolution action (what you do next).