US FedEx way past 'go' with latest Monopoly

Talk about a game face.

The 71-year-old Monopoly board has its new one on. And with a page from its 2003 Harry Potter delivery triumph, FedEx Corp. will have 164,000 copies of "Monopoly: Here & Now" in 7,200 stores Wednesday for the long-anticipated unveiling Thursday.

"This is the first time in history we've had an on-shelf date for a game," said Pat Riso, spokeswoman at Hasbro.

The board, designed this summer with the input of 3.6 million online voters, is shrouded in so much secrecy, the games are being shipped in black plastic with strict orders that it not be removed until the games are on store shelves.

In the world of the supply chain, the project is a perfect example of just-in-time logistics.

FedEx is shipping the order entirely through its ground network, the same crew that got 250,000 Internet orders of "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" to homes for Saturday delivery on June 21, 2003.

It will take about 5,500 employees and contractors. On delivery day, more than 5,000 FedEx Ground drivers will have the Monopoly games in the back of their trucks.

(If you want to see what the box looks like, it's on several Web sites, including the UK Amazon site.)

While Hasbro has introduced several themes of Monopoly games, this is the first with a 21st Century twist," Riso said. "It's also the first time Americans had had a chance to decide what would be on the game board."

All orders are shipping from Springfield, Mass. The first left Wednesday, headed to West Coast states, five driving days away.

"Like any other FedEx Ground shipment, we started moving the longer-distance packages first," said spokesman David Westrick. "We do single-day national deliveries – we call them drop ships in our world – very regularly."

Think of it this way: Any time there's a national advertising campaign, some company had to ship product to every state by a drop-dead date.

If people think just-in-time means overnight or air delivery, they don't realize how effective ground networks have become, says Bernie Hale, former head of distribution at Mattel Inc., and owner of Hale Logistics Consulting in San Juan Capistrano, Calif.

"The carriers that have survived have done so by working with larger clients. Those guys want the market served in X number of transit days, and they measure you by your performance."

For the year ended May 31, FedEx Express shipped only about 2,000 more packages per day in its U.S. network than FedEx Ground, the first year the divide has ever been so narrow. On an average day, both deliver about 2.8 million packages.

What's happened, analysts say, is that carriers' day-specific guarantees have taken the guesswork out of shipping.

"We used to think the most important thing was guaranteeing the shipping day," Hale said. "When we talked to our customers, we found what was most important to them was on-time delivery."

Now carriers, he said, are judged on both measures, "which has really tightened up the report card. If the carrier misses the delivery date, they may have financial penalties to pay to the shippers."

But people don't understand what a feat it is to ship to every state in a short amount of time, he said.

"If you had only 45 big cities, that's fine. But the remote spots are the killer. Fresno is a lot harder to manage then say, San Francisco.

"Somewhere behind the scenes, there's still a lots of project management going on to accomplish this."

Doug Long, director of logistics at Hasbro, was as calm on Thursday afternoon as a hotelier on Boardwalk.

"We were very, very, very specific with FedEx about our requirements. We need the games in all 50 states, plus Guam and Puerto Rico by close of business Wednesday."

And if things go wrong?

"We've discussed that. Reports are being run daily so we can track these shipments. If anything goes out of service, we can immediately react."

It will be FedEx's responsibility to communicate the problem, he said, "and ours – with them – to react."

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Monopoly: Here & Now

Landmarks from 22 cities – including Nashville – make up the new board.

Rents are inflation-adjusted.

Order the cities appear on board reflects their popularity with voters.

Four railroads are now four busiest U.S. airports.

Yes, you will still pass go, and plan on collecting a lot more than USD 200 when you do.

Suggested retail: USD 29.99