Assistance to Group Assignment - POIS

1.  What are UPS “Smart Labels?”  What role do they play in UPS operations? 

UPS Smart Labels are bar coded labels that are used to initiate a UPS transaction.  The bar code label contains all the key information about the customer, the package size, destination and weight.  This information is sent immediately to a UPS processing center at the very time it is created with a UPS drivers hand held computer (the DIAD IV).  The smart labels become the control document used throughout the transaction right through to final delivery.

2. Write out the steps a package takes from pick-up by a UPS driver to delivery including the role of DIAD, the UPS Data Center, and the UPS Package Center. 

Smart label created

Information sent to processing center

Information processed—stored, address corrected

Information matched to dispatch plan

Package is sortedAnother label is printed specifying delivery truck and position on truck

Geo software used to continuously update dispatch plans for trucks based on current load

Information is displayed on the DIAD IV identifying drop off order, position on truck

At delivery, package scanned.  Information sent wirelessly to processing center

Customers sign on the dotted line on the DIAD IV.

Main processing centers store complete track of package for customer tracking

3. What role does wireless communication play in the UPS systems?

DIAD IV is wirelessly connected to the main processing centers and the package centers.  Generally UPS trucks contain a transceiver to work with the local driver's DIAD IV, and then  communicate that information wirelessly back to the UPS processing center.

4. How has information technology transformed the package delivery business?

Package delivery used to take many days and even weeks prior to the development of the UPS technologies described in this video.  Now next day service is available anywhere in the United States, and around the world.   Information technology has made the industry much more efficient, reliable, and lower in cost to the customer.  IT has enhanced the competitive position of UPS and others like FedEx vis a vis the U.S. Postal Service, and prior local delivery services which no longer exist because of the success of UPS and FedEx.

5. How does UPS’s investment in IT help it achieve the strategic business objectives described in Chapter 1?

The most important contributions of technology to UPS strategic objectives is the greatly enhanced operational efficiency; the compression of time to deliver; the development of new services like tracking, and overnight or 2-day service; the closeness to the customer; improvements in the quality and speed of decisions related to packages. 

Firms that made these investments in IT benefit by achieving significant competitive advantage over others in the package delivery business.  FedEx remains a much smaller but competitive service especially in the overnight market.  Other competitors have largely disappeared.