Reducing Sinister Turns Make UPS Dextrous

Strib:

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.

But bringing order to the jumble of packages is the aim of a $600 million, six-year nationwide software project at Atlanta-based UPS. As a result, UPS has become a leader in using automation to improve the efficiency of package delivery, said Brian Clancy, an analyst with MergeGlobal, a freight and logistics consulting firm in Arlington, Va.
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Packages are unloaded from cross-country semitrailer trucks, pass through a spider's web of conveyor belts and have their shipper-provided bar-code labels scanned for delivery information. UPS managers use the data to map out a next-day delivery plan for the trucks, and the software then generates new labels that give each box an "assigned seat" on a particular vehicle.

This list of what's aboard is sent wirelessly to a specialized personal digital assistant carried by each driver -- the same device that people sign when a package is delivered. At the touch of a button, the driver can determine his or her next stop and the number of pieces to be delivered there.
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The package-flow software saves money in several ways, said Dean Thesing, a Twin Cities coordinator for what UPS calls its "Center of the Future." It streamlines loading and unloading delivery trucks so fewer workers are needed and less training is required; a team that used to load three trucks in four hours can now load four trucks. It also speeds up deliveries, so that a driver on average can make 16 extra stops per day, for a total of 136, he said.

In addition, the software has cut in half the number of delivery mistakes that force drivers to retrace their routes later in the day, Thesing said. That's because the software minimizes errors caused by packages being sent on the wrong truck or being lost beneath the jumble of boxes on the right truck.

Previously it wasn't uncommon to go back two or three times to some stops, Schetinski said.
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Collectively, the hundreds of UPS trucks driven in Minnesota have cut an estimated 353,755 miles over the past two years.

The software also allows better route planning. That already is something of a science at UPS, which has sought to minimize the number of left turns a driver must make, wasting time waiting for oncoming traffic before turning.

Using the Package Flow Technologies software, Maple Grove dispatchers can adjust the next day's routes throughout the night, Thesing said. The facility is electronically notified of a package's destination the moment it is shipped, enabling dispatchers to forecast the ebb and flow of packages and adjust delivery routes accordingly, he said.

"Before, we planned the delivery-truck routes once a month and adjusted them every day," Thesing said. "Now we can forecast 94 percent of our arriving packages, so we plan the routes every day and finalize them at 3 a.m."

Incredible what a simple change like reducing the number of left turns can do¹.  Or double-sided photocopying.  Or turning out lights when you're not using them.

I used to teach quite a bit for UPS down in their main data processing facility in Mahwah, NJ.  Truly an astounding place to behold.  My students gave me tours of the data center itself and there was just so much computing, storage and networking gear there I began to realize that UPS wasn't really in the shipping business so much as the data business.

It's quite a conservative company in some ways--for example, my students immediately knew I was their instructor before they even got in the classroom because I had a beard, and the only facial hair allowed was mustaches (similar to EDS, I believe).  But from a technology perspective, they've always been very forward-looking, as the new package flow application shows.

ntodd

1 - I remember hearing an NPR story several years ago about efforts to reduce left turns in road design for efficieny and safety reasons.  Couldn't find it, but I did find a coupla interesting things on innovative roadway design and signalized intersection strategies.

Comments

[Karin]

Small World dept again! My brother works for UPS, in the Mahwah NJ facility in fact. He's been to the giant automated sorting facility in Kentucky too, and he said it's awesome.

[watertiger]

And yet they still lose my packages.

No wait. That's the USPS. The very model of INefficiency.