Tag: FedEx

Global package race puts major carriers to the test

Posted by | May 1, 2007 | |

How hard is it to deliver a package to Ouagadougou? A group from the Supply Chain and Logistics Institute in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech, one of the most respected logistics programs in the world, puts the major carriers (UPS, FedEx and DHL) to the test every year with its Great Package Race, a contest to see which carrier can get a package to a very challenging locale the fastest and in the best condition.
A group of 60 logistics students, led by logistics expert John Bartholdi, a professor in the Stewart School, sends identical boxes bound for places like Lomé, Togo and Split, Croatia. With no indication that there’s a competition underway, each carrier picks up its parcel, and the race begins.

Admittedly, the race is an extreme test of the carriers’ ability to deliver anywhere in the world, Bartholdi said. This year’s packages were sent on April 13 to Yangon, Myanmar (formerly Burma); Tikrit, Iraq (one of the centers of Sunni insurgency); Floranopolis, Brazil (a small island); Harare, Zimbabwe and Apia, Samoa. Most packages arrived with a week or two, but one has yet to be delivered or returned.

DHL beat the competition this year, delivering first to three of the five locations and second to the remaining two. FedEx managed to deliver to three locations, and UPS delivered parcels to two. The remaining packages from FedEx and UPS went undelivered for a variety of reasons. In past races, the carriers traded wins in different locales.

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FedEx Trade Networks launches redesigned WorldTariff web site

Posted by | May 1, 2007 | |

FedEx Trade Networks, Inc., is launching its redesigned WorldTariffSM Web site. The Web site, located at www.worldtariff.com, provides complete duty and tax information for 123 countries, updated by an editorial staff with region-specific tariff knowledge and local language skills.
The redesigned WorldTariff Web site includes more online duty and tax content, an improved look and feel, on-demand access, and simplified pricing. In addition to annual subscription offerings, WorldTariff now enters the on-demand trade facilitation content market by providing convenient access to duty and tax information without an annual commitment or minimum purchase requirement.
Customers can now register online and pay with a credit card for only USD7 per online query. A USD7 online query provides customers complete duty and tax information for an entire 4-digit heading pertaining to the destination country of their choice (up to 123 countries), including:
• Every fully qualified Harmonized System (HS) code under a chosen 4-digit heading
• Most Favored Nation (MFN) applied duty rate, Value Added Tax (VAT), excise tax and miscellaneous taxes assessed at import
• Preferences that pertain to fully-qualified HS codes under the chosen heading, from all origin countries in the WorldTariff database, all on the same screen
• Tariff descriptions in English
• No annual commitment or minimum purchase requirement (frequent users may still opt for annual subscriptions)

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FedEx says landing rules cut its efficiency

Posted by | Apr 24, 2007 | |

New FAA landing rules imposed at Memphis International Airport last week reduce FedEx Express’ efficiency by more than 20 percent some days, quickly affecting its ability to deliver on its famous promise, the company says.

FedEx, surprised that the decision happened without warning, wrote a letter to Federal Aviation Administration administrator Marion Blakely last week, taking the agency to task for proceeding “without a formal review” and saying the impact “to our ‘absolutely, positively overnight’ service cannot be understated.”

The letter, signed by James Parker, senior vice president of air operations, says FedEx’s daytime landing efficiency will drop from 88 landings an hour to 68 landings when winds are out of the south.

The FAA starts its formal review at the airport today with agency officials from Washington, Atlanta and the Memphis air traffic control tower.

The goal, she said, is to see if the suspended procedure can be “mitigated” in a way that doesn’t affect safety “and has little impact on capacity.”

FedEx, which says it has never recorded a safety incident in the configuration, questions why the FAA would halt a long-used practice that the agency itself said was safe in 1999.

Since last week, controllers have been instructed to stagger landings on the runways when the wind is out of the south. The FAA said winds call for the landing configuration here 17 percent of the time.

National Weather Service records over 40 years show the wind blows out of the south in Memphis more than 42 percent of the year. In April, May, June and July, it is closer to 50 percent.

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FedEx's brand recognized

Posted by | Apr 23, 2007 | |

FedEx’s value as a brand in 2007 was strong enough to rank it No. 69 among the top 100 Most Powerful Brands worldwide.
The list was compiled by research agency Millward Brown Optimor and is being published in today’s edition of the Financial Times.
Brand value is a function of consumer perceptions, which were determined through more than 1 million interviews, and a combination of business performance, product delivery, the clarity of product or service positioning and leadership, Millward Brown Optimor stated in a release.
Based in Memphis, package shipper FedEx Corp. had a brand value of USD 9.31 billion for 2007, an increase of 13 percent over 2006.
Topping the list was Google, with a brand value of USD 66.4 billion, a 77 percent increase from last year. Rounding out the top five were General Electric with a brand value of USD 61.8 billion; Microsoft, with USD 54.9 billion; Coca-Cola, with USD 54.9 billion; and China Mobile with USD 41.1 billion.

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A Budding Network

Posted by | Apr 23, 2007 | |

The many hands–and connections –that go into overnight delivery
Information about the package is as important as the package itself.” I said that in 1978, five years after FedEx created the modern express industry. Please don’t misunderstand me. We care a lot about what’s inside the box, but the ability to track and trace shipments and thereby manage inventory in motion revolutionized logistics. Of course, back then I couldn’t have imagined what we’d be witnessing today: the vast and steady integration of the world’s economy into one giant interdependent global network.

Global integration is not a new phenomenon. It happened in the Roman era, over a network of roads; it happened during the Renaissance, when trading and merchant companies crisscrossed oceans; and it happened in the 19th century, with help from railroads and telegraphs. But today it’s happening faster than ever before and it means the dispersion of products and services of the widest breadth imaginable to every corner of the world.

We can now get our computer problems solved in minutes by a phone rep in India or get a same-day medical consultation by doctors in Tokyo, London and New York. And we can ship high-tech and high-value-added goods within one to two business days, door-to-door, virtually anywhere on the planet.

We couldn’t do any of this without complex information networks. FedEx spends roughly $1.5 billion a year on information technology. Some rough numbers will give you an idea of why. Every second of every day we have to handle 3,000 transactions, as well as 1,000 inquiries on the status of a package. Orders go out to 70,000 handheld devices carried by our couriers and contractors and millions of our customers’ desktops. Every day FedEx handles 6 million shipments around the globe. We have close to 7,000 people in IT overseeing what Rob Carter, our chief information officer, understatedly calls “an intense computing environment.”

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