Post-Visit Report
Company background
United Parcel Service, also known as UPS, was founded in 1907 in Seattle, Washington. UPS begin as a private messenger and provides delivery service. Nowadays, UPS has become the world's largest package delivery company, and a leader in providing global supply chain management solution. UPS Worldport in Louisville is the largest automated package handling facility globally, and it is the main international hub of UPS. They provide services worldwide, including transportation and delivery, distribution, contract logistic, ocean freight, air freight, customer brokerage and insurance. In 2021, UPS delivered an average of 25.2 million packages per day, totalling 6.4 billion packages during the year. UPS's total revenue reached $97.3 million in 2021.
Visit
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The video lets us take a look at the UPS Worldport in Louisville, the world's largest automated package handling facility. We can see the daily operation of UPS. The video mentioned how the frontline supervisor and the employee responsible for the general operation center dealt with bad weather. Besides, we see how the employees work under bad weather situations to recover the lost time.
Freight Tracking
UPS is using barcode tracking to handle the freight tracking. They prepare a unique barcode label for each freight, which is crucial. The cargo is ready to ship once it has been labelled. The barcode is like a life insurance policy for each package, and the company rely on it to clearly identified a specific package among all the package.
The package will be under one team in the operation planning control center in the world port. The crew needs to solve the package's problem if there is a technical defect, corrupt barcode, or delays to the delivery. The barcode is the key for the WorldPort to operate smoothly, 576 camera scanners are installed throughout the hall of Worldport. The scanner uses advanced technology, and it makes sure that every package is on the right conveyor belt and places based on its code.
The advantage of using barcode handling is that freight tracking is reliable. It eliminated possible human errors that may occur. For example, the employee may fill the information wrongly. Ease of use is also one of the advantages. The Barcode system does not require much employee training. The employee only needs to use the machine to get the label and stick it to the freight.
However, it is expensive to set up the related system, and the maintenance fee will be high too. Barcodes also are more easily damaged when people scratch it accidentally. There is no way to scan the product if the barcode is damaged as the barcode line of sight is needed to scan.
Other new technology to replace or compare
RFID is as widely used as barcode. It is a technology that involves a tag affixed to a product that identifies and tracks the product via radio waves. This tag can carry up to 2000 bytes of data. Some big companies also use RFID instead of barcode, such as Amazon. Although RFID faces the same situation with barcodes, like high set-up cost, it is more resilient. As the tags are much more durable and reliable, they will not be damaged by humidity and cannot be easily peeled off while barcode can. RFID tags don't need to be positioned in a line of sight with the scanner, and it can read from a greater distance. RFID can be a possible technology to be adopted by UPS to replace the barcode.
Since the video mentioned some challenges under bad weather or other situation, we will see frontline supervisor Tyler and contingency manager Terry deal with the bad weather and make sure the operation is smooth.
Frontline
Tyler is a supervisor responsible for loading and unloading the cargo plane. His daily duties include discussing the plan of the night with the frontline staff and providing clear instruction to the team. He is also responsible for monitoring the freight of inbound and outbound flights and ensuring the Worldport can keep to its planned take-off slot because the team has limited time to unload the freight.
The second challenge is to make a backup plan to respond to different situations. Although the team plans on some of the situations, the factors are uncontrollable and will happen differently. For example, the flight may be delayed or cancelled. It is hard for the supervisor to develop suitable plans to respond to different situations.
The arrangement of human resources in bad situation is quite challenging as Tyler will discuss the plan for night with the staff before they work. If the bad weather happens in the middle of the shift, so it is hard to allocate the human resources when the bad weather is gone as some of the positions may need more people to help after bad weather or flight delay.
Back Office
Terry is contingency manager in the global operation center (GOC). The global operation at the Worldport is the main headquarters for all UPS cargo flight activities worldwide. Terry is responsible for making sure every package reaches its destination on time. A delay or cancellation means less freight will arrive tonight than originally planned.
The first challenge is the weather problem. Weather condition is an important factor in the operation. GOC has a weather station with its own meteorologists. They will check the forecast worldwide and change route flights accordingly. The whole freight will go to take around 90 minutes to his. There will be a two hour period of significant activity to cause a lot of diversion and delay. The team needs to respond to the problem as soon as possible to lower the chance of delay or cancellation.
The second challenge is that GOC needs to develop contingency plans as quickly as possible. The GOC need to build a contingency plan to solve the above problem caused by bad weather and move shipments to their final destination. He needs to make sure the packages arrive on time even though the above emergencies happened.
Possible Plan
The possible contingency plan for GOC to respond are repairing the plane during a stopover or heading straight to Louisville. Repairing the plane during stopover has an uncertainty factor because of the weather right in Kansas City and mostly to the north, so it is a challenge if they do not have any delays getting in there, so they should make it.
Heading straight to Louisville ensures at least some of the goods will arrive on time. The team needs to reroute to avoid the storm, and the fuel level is low. The plane has to land in Kanas City to take care of the technical problem. The aircraft will continue its journey to Worldport once this is sorted out.
Most concerned factor in daily operation
UPS is concerned about how to deliver their flight on time. Being the world's largest delivery company, it is vital to show the company's emphasis on delivering customer packages on time. It causes a loss to UPS even with just a seconds delay in their delivery. The video shows the company eager to achieve package on-time delivery.
Examples
Weather Forecast
The weather would significantly affect whether the packages can reach the destination on time or not. The video mentioned UPS owned a weather station with its own meteorologist to forecast the weather more accurately. They also check the worldwide weather to see if they need to reroute or cancel the flight. Besides, the pilot would spend lots of time planning for weather before take-off the flights. They would also check the weather data and see if the weather would affect the flight time. It shows they try their best to avoid weather's effects by forecasting.
Reflection
We see how UPS work hard to avoid the weather's effect. Every wasted minute by the weather is a loss to UPS. All of the things they have done are to make sure the package can deliver to the customer on time. It also shows they value their customer. However, it is hard for UPS to make sure the weather is 100% what they forecast. It is great that they made different plans to respond to the bad weather.
We think UPS is so successful among its competitors because they are well-prepared for everything. For example, they will put two people to sort out the packages that just arrived at Worldport, and it will not disrupt the process even if there are large packages. Besides, all of their workers are hardworking, which made the process efficient even when they were affected by the bad weather. For example, the team uses 30 mins to unload the freight to recover the lost time because of the operation ban.
To sum up, USP is a strong company with diverse businesses, but they also keep improving to align with their mission, "offering excellence and value in all that we do."
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