United Parcel Service Research Articles

E‐business high on the agenda for UPS and FedEx

United Parcel Service was formed in 1907 and from humble beginnings as a messenger service in Seattle has transformed itself into a $31 billion industry of 360,000 employees spanning 200 countries. The world’s largest package distribution company delivers over 13 million packages and documents daily. Impressive statistics for sure. But behind the eye‐opening figures a storm is brewing, led by a company written off by many as a serious rival only a handful of years ago.

UPS collaborating with EPA, DaimlerChrysler for fuel cell delivery vehicles

In the US a collaborative project between delivery company United Parcel Service (UPS), automaker DaimlerChrysler and the EPA’s National Vehicle & Fuel Emissions Laboratory (NVFEL) will see UPS operating package delivery vehicles powered by hydrogen fuel cells by the end of 2003. This will be the first use of fuel cell technology in a commercial delivery fleet in North America. Visit www.re-focus.net for the latest renewable energy industry news

The 1997 United Parcel Service Strike: Framing the Story for Popular Consumption

The United Parcel Service (UPS) strike of August 1997 is now commonly cited as labor’s greatest success of the 1990s, when 185,000 Teamster workers brought the nation’s largest parcel delivery service to a standstill and won most of their demands. Despite the fact that millions of consumers in the United States were touched by inconveniences, the majority of citizens supported the striking workers. Also surprising, many mainstream news media dropped their typical consumer-oriented frames for telling stories about labor and instead presented a range of opinions about the status of part-time workers in the American economy, the years of downsizing at U.S. corporations, and the question of fair wages. This critical case study analyzes news frames of national television and print reports and discusses the factors behind such unusual coverage.

Hostile Media Perceptions: Partisan Assessments of Press and Public during the 1997 United Parcel Service Strike

This study investigated partisan perceptions of hostile bias in news coverage of the 1997 Teamsters Union strike against United Parcel Service (UPS), and the processes by which Teamster and UPS partisans formed impressions of public opinion regarding the strike. As predicted, both partisan groups perceived neutral news coverage as biased against their respective sides. However, perceptions of hostile media bias did not produce corresponding perceptions of hostile public opinion; instead, partisans appeared to rely on their personal opinions when estimating the opinions of others. Nonpartisan control-group subjects, however, did infer public opinion in part from their subjective assessments of news content. Findings suggest that level of involvement is crucial in predicting the effect that perceived media coverage of social issues will have on perceptions of public opinion regarding those issues.

Interview: United Parcel Service's Director of Electronic Commerce, Alan Amling, on the opportunities and challenges of global electronic commerce

AbstractThe development of global electronic commerce presents many opportunities as well as challenges for companies worldwide. Alan Amling, director of electronic commerce for United Parcel Service (UPS), discusses various aspects of electronic commerce, its global implications, and UPS's effort in enabling its global development. Mr. Amling emphasizes that the key success factor for e‐commerce is building relationships with customers and suppliers. For companies engaging in global e‐commerce, he suggests the importance of “Thinking Global, Acting Local.” Furthermore, Mr. Amling provides critical insights as to why UPS has been able to stay at the forefront in the development of e‐commerce and how UPS is positioning itself to enhance global e‐commerce's growth. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

United Parcel Services: Delivering Packages and E-Commerce Solutions

This case study describes how UPS has successfully migrated from a bricks-and-mortar environment to a clicks-and- mortar environment. It focuses on the development of an IT capability that positioned UPS to aggressively pursue e-business opportunities. It then describes the firm's wide ranging e-business initiatives, which include providing UPS functionality in vendor software packages, providing downloadable functionality on its website, and creating an e-Ventures group to seek out new business opportunities. The case addresses the challenge of moving quickly to provide e-business solutions while leveraging UPS' robust infrastructure.

Case Studies in Finance: Managing for Corporate Value Creation

Preface: note to the student - how to study and discuss cases. Part 1 Case: Warren E. Buffett, 1995 the Fidelity Magellan Fund, 1995 Jeanne Mockard, at Putman Investments the battle for value - Federal Express Corporation versus United Parcel Service of America Inc. Part 2 Financial analysis and forecasting - the financial detective, 1996 Oracle Systems Corp. the Body Shop International PLC - an introduction to financial modelling Padgett Paper Products Co. Sengupta Fibres Ltd Bayerns Brauerei Merril Electronics. Part 3 Estimating the cost of capital: best practice in estimating the cost of capital - survey an synthesis Grand Metropolitan PLC the Boeing 777 Teletech Corporation, 1996. Part 4 Capital budgeting and resource allocation: the investment detective Vesuvio Fonderia SpA Empirical Chemicals Ltd (A) Empirical Chemicals Ltd. (B) Glaxo Italia SpA -the Zinnat marketing decision Pan-Europa Foods, S.A. Astral Records N.A. Part 5 Management of shareholders' equity: Northboro Maching Tools Corporation Donaldson Lufkin, Jenrette, 1995 British Aerospace PLC (A). Part 6 Management of the corporate capital structure: introduction to debt policy and value MCI Communications Corp -capital structure theory Polaroid Corporation, 1996 Rosario Acero S.A. Planet Copias and Imagem. Part 7 Analysis of financing tactics: leases, options and foreign currency Merton Electronics Burlington Northern Railroad Company - euqipment leasing Boston Chicken 4 1/2per cent convertible subordinated debentures Bank of Tokyo General Motors -'99 equity financing. Part 8 Valuing the enterprise: acquisitions, buyouts, restructuring, and projects Rock Mountain advanced genome McCaw Cellular - ATT/McCaw merger negotiation Euro Disneyland S.C.A. - the project financing Calaveras Vineyards Mirth Press Inc. Medimedia International LTD Caledonian Newspapers AB Volvo/Regie Nationale DES - Usines Renault S.A. Rhone-Poulenc Roter. Part 9 Cross-border investments into emerging markets: Procter & Gamble Company - Mexico 1991 Paginas Amarelas Continental Cablevision/Fintelco joint venture Westmoreland Energy Inc. - power project at Zhangze China government of Euroslavia - GM-Euroslavia joint venture investment simulation. Part 10 Setting corporate financial policy: technical note - structuring corporate financial policy the Home Depot, Inc. United Telecommunications, Inc Rhones-Poulenc S.A. Massive Power Design Corp.

Building outsourcing relationships across the global community: the UPS–Motorola experience

The United Parcel Service (UPS)–Motorola case study revolves around two major areas of information technology (IT) management: IT as a competitive tool and global outsourcing of IT projects. It provides an opportunity to become familiar with the decisions and actions taken by UPS to assure their competitive advantage in the turbulent courier services industry. In the IT outsourcing area, the case addresses managerial and technical issues associated with outsourcing IT projects across the global community. The case presents the specific factors that made this outsourcing project successful and discusses the development of the outsourcing relationships between UPS and Motorola (Israel), from initial negotiations to the creation of a strategic alliance between the two companies. A major point in this case is the gradual development of trust between the two sides, trust that led the two firms from being committed to a contract to becoming strategic partners.

A Conversation with Mark Susor: Leadership in the largest UPS distribution facility in the world

Often while driving around Chicago on the I-294 toll road crossing the Des Plaines River on what is locally called the mile long bridge, I can view an expansive structure just south and west of the bridge. The facility itself is bigger than a football stadium, virtually surrounded with hundreds of semi trailers and an intramodal loading facility operated by the Burlington Northern - Santa Fe railroad. I knew this is one of United Parcel Service's (UPS) sorting facilities, but I had no idea how important it was to the regional operations of UPS. The importance of speed and the need for highly coordinated multi-modal shipping schedules and processing of packages makes for some very serious leadership challenges in operational planning and control. I wanted to learn more about those challenges. Time and time again, we see where there is a need for very tight logistical controls, both in delivery of raw materials and in final products. Time and dependability are critical for any shipping operation, and this is especially true in the small package delivery industry of UPS. I wanted to learn more about the leadership that it takes to make an operation like UPS work and particularly at UPS' largest sorting location in the world, the Chicago Area Consolidation Hub (CACH). I sat down with Mark Susor, the district industrial engineering manager. What I learned relates closely to the degree of leadership it takes to make a complex, interrelated system work effectively. I think you will enjoy the following interview. Ken Thompson: What is the extent of operations here at the Chicago Area Consolidation Hub (CACH) facility? Mark Susor: We sort from 1.3 million to 1.6 million packages per day. The CACH facility has 1.5 million square feet under one roof and a mezzanine of with an additional 400,000 square feet. The total site is 240 acres. The primary function of the CACH facility is to act as a consolidation hub for our North American ground network. Ken Thompson: You obviously have widely varying levels of demand for your services particularly on a seasonal basis. How do you vary your operations to meet those different levels of demand? Mark Susor: We have an operational plan that really serves us well. During the lower volume season, we complete much of our planned maintenance on the equipment and facilities. In addition, our various shifts have been designed to expand and contract to meet the demands for those particular needs for that shift for that day. During peak operating period, we will not schedule equipment off line for planned maintenance. For example, during the month of December, we have minimal preventive maintenance scheduled to make all the equipment available to the operation. That helps us handle the seasonal jump in volume as we go from 1.3 million to 1.6 million packages a day. During the peak time of the year, we use all the available equipment in the building. Our all time performance record for a 24-hour period is 1.85 million packages in a facility that was originally designed for 3 million packages per day when fully equipped. Ken Thompson: That is incredible and employing shifts of four to five hours was important to this process? Mark Susor: Yes, in this building, we have four four-hour shifts that operate daily. We have a Sunrise Sort that starts around 4 a.m. and will finish around 7:45 to 8:00 a.m. We have a Day shift that starts around 10:00 to 10:15 in the morning, and we usually look to put that operation down around 1:30 in the afternoon. We then have the building down until the twilight shift. The Twilight shift starts around 5:15 p.m. and we will run that until about 8:30 p.m. Once we finish out that sort, we will then start up a night sort, currently about 10:00 to 10:15 in the evening, and we will look to put that operation down about l:30 to 2:00 in the morning. Ken Thompson: So, during the peak times, the 4-hour sort time might expand up to 5 hours? …

Managing Culture for Competitive Advantage at United Parcel Service

AbstractCompetitive advantage traditionally is seen as a function of excellence in products, systems, marketing, or other operational attributes of a business. UPS has led in many of these areas. Its fundamental competitive strength, however, derives from the organization's unique culture, which has spanned almost a century, growing deeper all along. This culture provides solid, consistent roots for everything the company does, from skill training to technological innovation. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Measurement and Analysis of the United Parcel Service Ground Shipping Environment for Large and Heavy Packages

Abstract This study investigated the United Parcel Shipping environment for shipping large and heavy packages weighing up to 150 lb. The data were collected using instrumented packages that contained triaxial recorders to measure acceleration levels produced by drops and impacts during shipping and handling. The study showed that the existing test methods used to design and evaluate such packages for this type of shipping environment in accordance with ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials) and ISTA (International Safe Transit Association) test methods do not replicate the levels of damage found in real shipments. The study recommends tests that would produce more realistic damage levels for this environment.

The Math Club for Girls and Other Problem Solvers

You have just entered ‘My Plane,’” reported Captain Karen Lee, pilot at the United Parcel Service hub at the Louisville (Kentucky) International Airport. A group of girls from Meyzeek Middle School listened intently to Captain Lee's every word as they tried out the few passenger seats, sat in the pilot's cockpit, tried on her cap and blazer, and even tinkered with the dials and switches. Captain Lee works at one of the largest employers in our area, UPS, where the Math Club for Girls and Other Problem Solvers was touring the facilities of this package-delivery giant. Our interest in this senior pilot's career was the incentive for the group's visit, yet the club also observed the center's activities. At the most hectic point of the visit, fifty planes were being packed with cargo.

Re‐engineering global supply chains

During the 1990s, globalization and time‐based competition have emerged as important business strategies leading to renewed emphasis on the logistics function. This has opened up opportunities for strategic alliances between manufacturing firms and specialized logistics services providers, with each partner focusing on its core area of competence. Although such alliances are common in North America and Europe, the determinants of success of such partnerships in the global context are not well researched and understood. Moreover this concept is relatively new in Asia. This paper presents an overview of the issues that impact the success of a strategic partnership between manufacturing firms and global logistics services providers (GLSPs). A case study featuring Motorola’s Semiconductor Products Sector and United Parcel Service (UPS) is described, for bringing out the important tradeoffs in such an alliance.

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit: Mingtai Fire & Marine Insurance co., Ltd. v. United Parcel Service

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The Teamsters' UPS Strike of 1997: Building a New Labor Movement

At a time when the American labor movement is struggling to re verse its decline in membership and strength, the Teamsters' nine-month contract campaign at United Parcel Service in 1997 demonstrated that labor can rebuild its power by involving its members, reaching out for public support, and challenging corporate power on behalf of all working people.

The Dead Skin Scrolls

I am going to try to bear witness to a blurry Polaroid of my naked body taken by my girlfriend?and first romantic love?in the late summer of 1979. Karen was nineteen, and were the camera turned around it would have revealed a smile as brave and devilish as mine. I was twenty and blessedly unable to pull off that stiff upper lip our culture mandates for its young men. About to go under the knife of both surgery and scrutiny, I appear to be mocking the moment, my glinting eyes lit up like a flashing marquee for the latest coming of-age film, Chipper Dale. And I guess I'm sharing this blurry, underexposed old photograph because that's a mask I sit here eighteen years later still trying to remove. I'm posing mock heroic on a flowery bedspread, with bent knees and a sunburned smile, brandishing a cheap steak knife in my right hand. My phy sique looks fit from a summer loading trucks for United Parcel Service. A suburbanite, I have a farmer's tan from golfing. Stuck at a right angle, my pinkie finger can't fully clasp the knife handle because of a high fly ball I misjudged when I was nine. The bumpy terrain at my left knee testifies to a boyhood bout with Osgood Slaughter, a growing disease that put me on crutches for a month when I was eleven. My bellybutton is an innie. A blond cowlick sticks up from the crown of my head like the last fir at a distant tree line. The hair on my chest is sparse; that on my legs dense. Faking a wildman scream, my mouth is agape, but my tongue is nowhere in sight. It was stuck to the roof of my mouth at birth, and the muscle which allows us to trill our tongues towards our noses had to be snipped. Then there is my foreskin. If our bodies are road maps (as the scholars and the poets claim), there are stories and scars, private roads and social codes to be traced in that Polaroid.

Executive Insights: International Partnering—A Systematic Framework for Collaborating with Foreign Business Partners

One consequence of market globalization has been the growing incidence of collaborative ventures among companies from different countries. Small and large, experienced and novice, companies increasingly are choosing partnerships as a way to compete in the global marketplace. Motives for international collaborative ventures are varied and complex, including a desire to leverage resources and assets, retain flexibility, reduce risks, gain speed, and capitalize on each partner's strengths. The systematic framework presented here can be used by managers as a practical, ten-step approach to establishing successful collaborative ventures. The article also discusses four major types of international business partnership—distributor agreements, licensing, franchising, and joint ventures, and highlights key success factors for each. A major player in express package delivery, United Parcel Service (UPS) has been actively globalizing its operations for more than 20 years. The company first entered Canada and Germany and then other markets without a strategic plan or much commitment. The approach was simply enter markets one by one, set up operations, and wait for the market to develop. When available, UPS acquired an existing delivery company in order to get established more quickly. In exploring entry into Japan, UPS encountered a significant challenge. While UPS is competent in distribution and logistic networking, it knew little about the Japanese market and quickly realized that it needed a partner with customs clearance expertise. In a market well known for nontariff trade barriers, UPS also required assistance in deciphering the complex legal, structural, and political environment. A local partner would provide specific market expertise and help UPS overcome entry barriers. Furthermore, with a legacy of losing money in overseas operations, UPS did not wish to risk much capital in Japan. For these reasons, partnering with a qualified Japanese company made most sense. Yamato of Japan emerged as a prospective partner. It was experienced, had access to distribution channels, and was well capitalized. Interestingly, when UPS began negotiations, it inquired whether Yamato would be interested in a purchase. Yamato management asked the selling price of UPS—not exactly what UPS had in mind! As it turned out, there was a good fit and sufficient rationale for the two companies to establish a strategic alliance. UPS realized that a partnership with Yamato could not be a one-way street and arranged to bring packages back to the United States for delivery from Yamato. This opened up the market in both directions for each company. Teams of employees were exchanged to learn about organization and business processes, which provided valuable experience in making each company a truly global player.

Measurement and Analysis of the Overnight Small Package Shipping Environment for Federal Express and United Parcel Service

Abstract The purpose of this study was to measure and characterize the various impacts (free fall drops, lateral kicks, and tosses) received by packages in the overnight small parcel environments found at Federal Express and United Parcel Service. Packages instrumented with tri-axial shock data recorders were repeatedly sent through UPS “Next Day Air” and Federal Express “Priority Overnight” services and shipped from East Lansing, MI to five destinations: Monterey, CA; Atlanta, GA; Rochester, NY; Portland, OR; and Memphis, TN. A total of 100 trips were monitored and 2394 impact events recorded that measured over the trigger threshold level of 10 G. The data show that a package encounters an average of 24 shock events throughout a one-way trip consisting of 31% drops, 43.6% kicks, and 25.4% tosses. The highest free-fall drop height measured was 1.97 m (77.8 in.). The maximum kick level was 5.91 m/s (233 in./s), and the highest equivalent drop height in a toss was 0.79 m (31.4 in.). The results indicate that 95% of all drops were from less than 0.40 m (16 in.), 95% of all kicks were from less than 3.42 m/sec (135 in./s), and 95% of all tosses were from less than 0.26 m (10.5 in.) equivalent drop height. The packages received 51.1% of total impacts on edges, 42% on corners, and only 6.9% on the six flat faces. Erratum to this paper appears in 24(6).

What veterinary practice managers can learn from other health care professions.

Joel Barker, a noted futurist, points out that the best ideas usually come from outside an industry or profession. As a management consultant, I often get new ideas from industries completely unrelated to my clients' industry. For example, companies interested in offering outstanding customer service might study Nordstrom's, L.L. Bean, or Lexus. Those interested in world class distribution might research Federal Express or United Parcel Service. Airlines, trying to minimize downtime of jets at the terminal, learn secrets from Indianapolis 500 pit crews. Similarly, in observing optometrists and dentists, there are valuable lessons for veterinarians. Dentists identified a business model or organizational structure that generates healthy profits. Independent optometrists experienced the onslaught of intense competition from huge corporate players and weathered the storm. The veterinary profession is not so unique. By studying other professions, we need not recreate the wheel.

A Charmed Brew

As we choose between on- site document delivery services or remote services and attempt to evaluate types of access available, costs involved, turn-around time, ease of order placement, delivery options, frequency of update, and technical support provided, we have created for ourselves not only a charmed brew, but as Ronald Leach says, an electronic tower of Babylon.[5] Confused? Where does the confusion lie? Not only must we choose between the services I just mentioned, but we need to decide on the system and mode of delivery as well! Will we use fax, or how about Federal Express, Overnight Courier, United Parcel Service, Next Day Air, and please don't forget Second Day Air. The option of electronic scanning also exists, and for some, Ariel is the answer, where a scanned fax is sent over the Internet. Article discusses these and other decisions.