According to the founder of UPS, J. E. Casey, “good management is not just organization. It is an attitude inspired by the will to do right (1949)” (Meisinger, 2005 p. 189). Operations philosophy of UPS has been derived from the four distinct performance measures established even during J. Casey’s managerial operations: (1) cost per delivery, (2) time per delivery, (3) number of deliveries, and (4) cost per trip (Coogan, 1996 p. 12). The focal points of UPS philosophy involve developing its global commerce in more than 200 countries and utilizing metric-based industry standards among its operations and human resources (Meisinger, 2005 p.
189). On the other hand, Phillips (2005) mention that another culture prevailing in UPS operations management is the development of employment standards and retention rates instead of frequent hiring (p. 13). b. Markets served As of 2007 revenue statistics, UPS Package Operations have reached the accounts of U. S. $41. 3 billion comprising of $4 billion in delivery volume.
The widened service facilities of UPS enable global reach of customers, especially those near their service centers. As of 2007, customer predictive accounts to 7.9 million expected deliveries world wide every day, and these comprise 1. 8 million from pick-ups and 6. 1 million of total deliveries (UPS Fact Sheets, 2008).
On the other hand, UPS facilities are not the only access of global customers for acquiring delivery services, but also through their official website UPS. com, which provide the company the average of 18. 5 million daily on-line tracking requests (UPS Fact Sheets, 2008). c. Types of Cargo In defining the UPS cargo services, it is best to categorize these according to the transfer/ transshipment points or the cargo hubs.
According to Shafran and Strauss-Wieder (2003), UPS utilizes for standard cargo hubs through its different sets of available vehicles for (a) Sea Port deliveries, (b) Airport deliveries, (c) Rail yard deliveries and (d) truck terminals (p. 23). UPS Air cargo works as Integrated Carriers similar to FedEx, Airborne Express, DHL Airways and Emery Worldwide. According to Wensveen and Wells (2007), these Integrated Carriers operate on a door-to-door freight transportation networks that usually comprise all-cargo aircraft, delivery vehicles, sorting hubs and advanced information systems (p.325).
As for UPS air cargo, all-cargo jets and chartered aircrafts are used in order to ensure adequate capacity and service reliability. d. Limitations/problems Currently, UPS Integrated cargo deliveries usually encounter two problems during the process of delivery: (a) fuel economization and (b) geographical location of delivery point. With the high number of operational vehicles under UPS management, the industry is still unable to immediately convert its more than 100,000 ground vehicles to alternative-fuel based cars.
With this technology, UPS can further economize their fuel consumption. Even though, UPS uses their GIS (Geographical Information System) and employs mostly local drivers and delivery attendants according to the area of facility, according to Pick (2004), outsourcing and routing of geographical destination can be affected by the driver’s limitations, vehicle capacity and costs, supplier and customer schedules and route characteristics, which are all non-modifiable (p. 207).