Tag: UPS

When Rick Schetinski starts his United Parcel Service truck each morning, he no longer worries about overlooking packages during a rapid-fire delivery schedule averaging 17 stops per hour.

Thanks to a huge computer-automation project at the Maple Grove distribution center where his truck is loaded, Schetinski receives a list on his handheld computer of everything in his truck and where it’s going. “In years past, the truck was loaded but you didn’t know what was in it” or where it was, Schetinski said. “It would take you 20 minutes a couple of times a day to go through the truck to see what you had.”

UPS says the automation system – akin to putting the Dewey Decimal System in a library to replace random book piles – is a key to handling increasing package volume, up 8 percent this year, and coping with the increased volume of holiday deliveries. The Maple Grove distribution center, one of three serving the Twin Cities, expects a peak volume of 86,000 packages a day around Dec. 20, up from 59,000 packages a day the rest of the year.
Automating a fleet of delivery trucks is quite a feat considering that the back of a United Parcel Service truck resembles a cardboard-box jungle. Hundreds of boxes and envelopes crowd the floor and eight shelves in each truck, differentiated only by small labels that spell out their destinations.

Next year will be a special year for UPS as Big Brown turns 100 on Aug. 28. However, it is the other events that could occur in 2007 that will make it an important year for the company and the transportation industry and thus provide a strong incentive for the UPS management and Teamsters leadership to cooperate in an unprecedented manner in the interest of the customers, investors, employees and management.

Teamster cooperation with early contract execution would allow UPS to avert parcel volume diversion and revenue loss to competition, and disruption to shippers operations. By announcing the agreement in 2007, the union would gain by preventing potential job losses that a drawn-out negotiation might bring. UPS gets the opportunity to ramp up its integrated air and ground domestic parcel service from both operational and marketing perspective for a new competitive advantage for market share gain.

Shareholders would also gain. If UPS, with its strong cash flow, is unable to make a large strategic acquisition in 2007, the board of directors could authorize another share buyback on top of two buyback authorizations over the last three years totaling USD4 billion.

UPS has spent USD600 million to automate package sorting and cut time, miles and cost. For drivers, it’s a real help.

When Rick Schetinski starts his United Parcel Service truck each morning, he no longer worries about overlooking packages during a rapid-fire delivery schedule averaging 17 stops per hour.
Thanks to a huge computer-automation project at the Maple Grove distribution center where his truck is loaded, Schetinski receives a list on his handheld computer of everything in his truck and where it’s going.

UPS says the automation system — akin to putting the Dewey Decimal System in a library to replace random book piles — is a key to handling increasing package volume, up 8 percent this year, and coping with the increased volume of holiday deliveries. The Maple Grove distribution center, one of three serving the Twin Cities, expects a peak volume of 86,000 packages a day around Dec. 20, up from 59,000 packages a day the rest of the year.