Founded in 1907 as a messenger company, United Parcel Service has grown into a world renowned provider of specialized transportation and logistics services. This multi-billion corporation enables and manages the flow of goods, information, and funds to over 200 countries and territories around the globe (UPS.com, 2013). Air, freight, oceanic is just a few of the modes that UPS uses to move the flow of goods around the globe. The company structure of UPS entails operations in three segments: U.S. Domestic Package operations, International Package operations, and Supply Chain & Freight operations. It’s just about an everyday occurrence to see an brown UPS truck on the road as we go about our everyday lives, the U.S. Domestic Package operations are comprised of delivery of documents, packages, and letters around the United States. The International Package operation delivers specifically outside the United States. Providing deliveries to the world’s major business hubs up to three times a day, UPS can deliver packages to at the best time possible for their customers. UPS has teamed up with the U.S. Commercial Service, an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, to help customers get started exporting or increase their sales to new global markets (UPS.com, 2013). Partnering within a supply chain can prove to be very important in the success of the overall supply chain. Communication within a supply chain that flows freely between partners reduces in-efficiencies such as excess inventory (bullwhip effect), and lost profits. The Supply Chain & Freight operation within UPS entails forwarding and contract logistics operations and UPS Freight. As a freight forwarder they organize shipments from various sources to their final p... ... middle of paper ... ...CS.com, 2005). The key to the success of this partnership between UPS and Adidas is the single, streamlined (integrated) supply chain that allows them to view all aspects/processes within it and to adjust when and wherever necessary. Visibility throughout the entire supply chain process produced results for Adidas by increasing order accuracy, improved customer satisfaction, and a boost in on-time deliveries. Flexibility is the key process that is needed in the supply chain integration processes, the ability to ramp up or ramp down operations can make a world of difference in operations and meeting customer demand. Works Cited UPS.com. (2013). UPS History. Retrieved from http://www.ups.com/content/corp/about/history/ UPS-SCS.com (2005. Adidas goes for the Gold in Customer Service. Retrieved from http://www.ups-scs.com/solutions/case_studies/cs_adidas.pdf
...to deal with inbound and outbound logistics, one that is made up mostly of the personnel from outbound logistics. These professionals deal with the second core competency of Deere, logistics, separate from the manufacturing of tractors and lawnmowers. The creation of this team helps eliminate the risk Fedex’s poor performance (managers were not pleased with Fedex’s centralized transportation management service) and need to measure performance of a 3rd part continuously. As a result, performance is self-managed. We expect as the IT system is used to optimize and plan transportation routes amongst inbound and outbound trucks, cost savings will increase more rapidly. We believe internal continuous improvement, leaner logistics operations and synergies amongst all logistics activities will lead to the $69 million goal being met by the third year after implementation.
The following case describes FedEx’s transition from a single segment Express shipping company to a fully integrated, multi-faceted corporation. At the beginning, Federal Express was an air express transportation system designed specifically for shipping time-sensitive items like urgent documents or medicines. After receiving a large investment, Federal Express began its first night of operations on April 17, 1973. Within the first 10 years, Federal Express became the first U.S. start-up to achieve $1 billion in revenues. Nevertheless, in the late 1990’s with the development of technology, FedEx began to express concern in some areas of business. E-mail, its competitors (UPS), new innovative supply chain strategies with low production
Having spent the better part of 35 years in the shipping and cargo field, Craig Raucher has established many non-asset and asset based operations for DHL Worldwide Express, Total Freight Solutions Global, and Corporate Express Delivery Systems. His ability to determine whether the third party logistics company will retain and use their own assets or others has increased the profits of each
UPS is the largest parcel delivery service in the world. They also help their customers its customers with supply chain management, logistics, and financial services. UPS used to be a trucking company with technology, now it¡¦s a technology company with trucks. One of the UPS¡¦s key success factors is the way they manage their operations. Their carefully designed network of vehicles, sorting facilities, and hubs combined with their IT system, allows them to pick up 13 million packages each day from 2 million addresses for delivery to over 6 million commercial and residential addresses worldwide with highest levels of reliability, efficiency, and speed. Also the integration of its air and ground operations gave UPS the ability to optimize utilization of its assets while still meeting customer service requirements. Other key success factor is UPS¡¦s human resource management. UPS has lowest turnover rates in the industry and succeeds in developing a portion of its workforce for management positions each year. The company¡¦s unique culture emphasized accountability and efficient execution at every level of the organization.
Federal Express is the world’s largest package delivery company today. They have been successful mainly because of their technological advancements. Technology has allowed them to have superior customer service and quality that was unparalleled by any company. No company was able to offer overnight delivery of packages with the speed and precision that Federal Express did. Although Federal Express remains ahead of its competition today, their advantages over other firms in the industry are slowly diminishing.
UPS and FedEx are the leading parcel carriers in the U.S. FedEx has significantly expanded their capability to compete with UPS’s dominant ground delivery service. UPS has continued its strong marketing efforts in overnight and deferred air services. Both of these carriers have introduced information systems, which include user-friendly Internet interfaces. The carriers have also expanded logistical services and improved integration with customer supply chains.
UPS’ core competency is efficient and reliable package delivery. However, over the last two decades, UPS invested heavily in Information Technology to develop its capabilities. With this new technology driven approach UPS managed to integrate UPS and client’s info systems. This business process integration benefitted both by exponentially increasing the business value, also these collaborative Info systems unlocked tremendous potential making UPS the world’s most admired company in the year 2000.
Our Logistics unit is driving for synergistic growth, developing and securing its links to Container Shipping
The United Parcel Service is a global leader in shipping and logistics. UPS was founded in 1907 as the American Messenger Company with a value proposition that still holds true today: best service and lowest rates (UPS History, 2014). After rapid growth and mergers with competition, the company became the United Parcel Service in 1919. Throughout the next decades they continued to broaden their services and horizons. In 1953 they started offering two-day air service to major cities in the United States (UPS History, 2014). Another notable event occurred in 1975 when they obtained authorization to ship freely in all 48 contiguous states. Prior to this, some packages had to be transferred between several carriers before reaching their final destination. (UPS History, 2014) This undoubtedly created challenges in their operations and supply chain. Their ability to overcome this issue is just one example of their determination to be the best shipping company. To compete with some of its largest competitors, UPS started their Next-Day-Air service in 1982. In the late 1980s, they streamlined their air services with the creation of UPS Airlines. This has been an important component of their supply chain, especially with the use of the Computerized Operations Monitoring, Planning and Scheduling System (COMPASS). (UPS History, 2014) During the 1980s UPS also expanded their international services. The 1990s saw more advances in technology as well as services. UPS realized that they were in a strategic position to offer supply chain solutions. The UPS Logistics Group was formed in 1995 with the purpose of providing global supply chain management solutions and consulting services (UPS History, 2014). Over the last decade, UPS has continued to ...
UPS, United Parcel Service, is the worlds largest delivery company for packages. There is a lot of logistics and supply chain management that goes into the day-to-day functions of UPS that one would not normally think of. I personally did not. However when I had a poor experience with UPS recently and found myself in the actual UPS store wanting to pull my hair out because of how not implementing technology could hurt a business.
The United Parcel Service has taken steps to restructure itself from an operations-oriented company into a market driven industry. Recent findings suggested the need to achieve better external customer satisfaction. The steps taken were to improve the overall of all customers that utilize the services at UPS. Other key areas that need improvement are volume logistics and customer logistics. The main priority at UPS is to deliver the package on time. They provide a much-anticipated alternative to the monopoly of the United States Postal Service. This competitor has been unreliable on multiple occasions. The average customer is feed up with the inconsistencies of the United States Postal Service. Unlike this company, the United Parcel Service helped define the word efficiency. Even from the earliest days, when Jim Casey and Claude Ryan, two Seattle teens, gave life to the now world-known UPS delivery company. ”Management is the...
Quickly becoming apparent after only a few rounds of play was in the absence of coordinating direction the individual supply chain links immediately focused upon acting in their own best interests much more so than the organization as a whole. Whether the end use customer was satisfied became secondary to avoiding stock outages for the next link in the chain, or their specific “upstream customer”. The real world application of this example is that focus on the end use customer must be consistent and maintained throughout the process up to and including delivery. Undoubtedly internal customers, such as retailers to wholesalers and distributors to production, must be serviced along the way for the transaction to ultimately occur. However, unless an end use customer is involved no profit can be realized by anyone.
The challenges of today’s companies are to find the right balance between the management of their processes within the supply chain and meeting the expectancies of their customers, i.e. customer satisfaction. However, the latter will be only available if all the components of the supply chain will lead towards this customer satisfaction, and not only process optimization and effectiveness-research. Companies had yet to shift towards a solely customer-oriented process, however by doing so it definitely brings what we can call Demand Chain Management. Indeed, the emphasis is now on the needs of the market instead of the manufacturers’ needs. In this case, the supplier itself has to also adapt to the needs of the demand. This is why an often forgotten side that is marketing has also to be implemented in the process.
Supply Chain Management (SCM) is the management and control of the flow of goods. It includes the movement and the storage of raw materials, work-in-process inventory, and also finished goods from the origin to the consumption. SCM has been defined as “design, planning, execution, control, and also monitoring of supply chain activities with the goal of creating net value, building a competitive site, leveraging global logistics, combining supply with demand and measuring performance universally” 1. As part of my task, I will discuss the topics of logistics, communication within the supply chain, such as, information systems and Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), relationships with partners, the environment of SCM and the marketing channels and process. My objectives are to inform you how the process of SCM works, how it enables profitable growth and enhances customer satisfaction. SCM creates all positive outputs, according to the Journal of Operations and Supply Chain Management, results showed positive effects of SCM on all performance dimensions, backed-up by the resource-based and relational views of strategy 2.
Coyle, J., Langley, C., Gibson, B., Novack, R. and Bardi, E. (2008).Supply Chain Management: A Logistics Perspective. 8th ed. Cengage Learning, p.366.