UPS Strategic Plan Analysis
History of UPS
UPS is the world's largest package delivery company and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. The company was started in 1907 by James (Jim) Casey at the age of nineteen. Jim Casey borrowed $100 from a friend and started the American Messenger Company in Seattle, Washington. Despite stiff competition, the company did well because of Jim's strict policies: customer courtesy, reliability, round-the-clock service, and low rates. He used the slogan: "Best Service and Lowest Rates." (www.ups.com).
In 1913, the company began to focus on package delivery for retail stores. The company merged with a competitor to form Merchants Parcel Delivery. The 1920s and 1930s saw growth, creativity and change. The company expanded to California and by 1930, service was provided to all major West Coast cities. In addition, a consolidated delivery service was established in New York city. Many innovations were adopted, including the first mechanical system for sorting packages and a 180 foot conveyor belt was installed in Los Angeles. The company changed its name to United Parcel Service and all the UPS vehicles were now painted the familiar Pullman brown color, chosen for its dignified, professional look and its ability to keep clean.
World War II forced UPS to redefine itself. Retail stores encouraged customers to carry their packages home rather than have them delivered. The trend continued with the creation of suburban shopping centers or malls. UPS began looking for new "common carrier" rights to deliver packages between all addresses, including private or commercial. This put it into direct competition with the U.S. Postal Service. UPS was restricted from operating in many parts of the...
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...ut. Any mistakes are magnified by the sheer size of the company and have the potential of being very costly. That being said, UPS has done a good job of minimizing costly mistakes along the way. In addition, a large company can still have small pockets of resistance from employees to change or have employees who add very little or no value. As UPS continues to automate and consolidate its workforces, it must do a better job of bringing the strategic mission down to the frontlines. After several years of "flavor of the month" initiatives, the Balanced Scorecard method has been fairly successful and should be constantly reviewed to make sure the proper behaviour is being encouraged. Overall, UPS is doing a very good job of creating the vision, supporting the vision through the proper objectives and initiatives, and executing the vision with the Balanced Scorecard.
Background Information In implementing a strategic plan for Coastal Medical Center, our consulting team has conducted many analyses and formed numerous strategies in order for Coastal Medical Center to be successful. Such assessments include an internal analysis, external analysis, gap analysis, and SWOT analysis. In conducting these analyses, our consulting team was able to better understand the internal environment, external environment, where the organization currently stands in terms of performance, and the major strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that oppose the Coastal Medical Center. From our inquiry, we will be able to establish a strategic plan that best fits the organization’s needs.
After analyzing the Coastal Medical Center, it is apparent that the employees and staff have no conception of the mission, vision, and values of this health care facility. In addition to this lack of structure, CMC has many projects in the midst of production that lack support of a common goal, employees are unsatisfied with their jobs, the two boards lack ability to agree on strategic decisions for the organization,, and the medical center has a dismal reputation when it comes to quality care.
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.
Furthermore, this was kind of funny, because as a kid I was amazed at how Amazon ships customers’ packages in the fastest and the most cost-effective way. As a kid, I remember asking my parents “How does Amazon do this?” and I remember them saying that I will need to major in a topic that will help me understand this process. Every time I ordered an item from them, I would think about the process of obtaining the packages using robots, packing the items safely, and then shipping them off to customers. This is an example of logistics and efficiency at its finest. As a junior, I still do not understand this process fully, since I am currently taking IDIS 240. But, by the time I graduate, I hope to fully understand this process.
The United States Postal Service is a reliable, excellent, and efficient delivery service. Overall customer rating of any business makes it a profitable and reliable industry. The post office has met these expectations and has gone above and beyond to serve their customers. This delivery service and its employees contribute in many ways to citizens across the nation. They are the best shipping industry in the United States.
At one point or another, we have all held and opened a piece of mail. Whether it was a birthday card, a letter from a friend, or even a bill, we have all held a piece of paper that was sent from somewhere else. Even in the age of Facebook and email, it is likely that you have held a piece of mail and most likely, the way it got from point A (the person sending the mail) to point B (the person receiving the mail) was through the United States Postal Service, or the USPS. In the past decade, the postal service has experienced a decreased volume in their letter mail. In fact, for the postal service, the volume of this letter mail has been "falling at a rate not seen since the Great Depression" and it is believed to be because the "substitution [of snail mail] to Internet-based communications" (Geddes). The postal service has started to experience such a decline in funds that they now face the issue of staying afloat. The United States Postal Service has to dig their way out of rut in order to keep from going down into extinction. Peter Rorvig, a United States postal worker in Zirconia, North Carolina, talks some about the USPS's struggles and the involvement that Congress has with the USPS in his blog "More Normal than Not." This passage raised two outside questions, exactly what is the postal service trying to do to solve this decline in funds and how much is Congress actually involved with the USPS?
However, RLK’s competitors are downsizing and outsourcing R&D and exploiting on the cost advantages. If RLK decides to invest more money into R&D and should the new product stall on launch, they face the danger of becoming bankrupt.
Peterbilt When our country was at war, the military identified the need for trucks. Trucks were very important because it was difficult to find a way to transport all the supplies, troops, and food. After WW1, this brought an increase in good roads, plus an expanding economy. This helped grow the trucking industry. The 1920’s were the years of innovation.
UPS is a global parcel transportation company, if we look at the numbers we could say that UPS is the third biggest parcel delivery company in the world.
New businesses will take longer to thrive with the United States falling economy. The faltering job market and the deepening slump in housing threaten to hurt consumer spending. Consumers are becoming more conscious of their spending and therefore using cash to pay for smaller necessary purchases. The cost of entertainment and other presumed luxuries may be pushed to the background by most families, when having to choose whether to pay for a bill or treat the family out. Thriving businesses will understand the need to provide a service or product at affordable prices.
Business depends very critically upon Fed Ex. If Fed Ex had a major disruption to their delivery system, flowers would not be delivered on time, resulting in dissatisfied customers. For example, if Fed Ex employees went on strike, there would be no alternative equivalent to Fed Ex to deliver flowers to customers. UPS, although an alternative, did not deliver perishable products in the same timely fashion as Fed Ex.
Market Demographics: The target market is everyone in the world who needs to ship an item. Christmas time is a particularly busy time for shipping items across the world, whereas people need a company like UPS to do the delivering for them.
A Balanced Scorecard can be defined as a “performance management tool which began as a concept for measuring whether the smaller-scale operational activities of a company are aligned with its larger-scale objectives in terms of vision and strategy” (Wikipedia 2009, ¶ 1). Scents & Things will need to develop a balanced scorecard that will assist in meeting and help define the company’s values, mission, vision, and SWOT analysis. The balance scorecard is made up of four perspectives; financial, customer, learning and growing, and internal process. This paper will define each of the four perspectives objectives, performance measures, targets, and initiatives. The paper will also show how the perspectives relate to Scents & Things vision, mission, values, and SWOTT analysis.
The Balanced Scorecard has emerged in recent years as a performance measurement system in various organizations. This paper will discuss the origin and concept of the balanced scorecard and how it was first implemented. We will then review the criticisms on the balanced scorecard methodology as well as analyse the strengths and weaknesses of this performance measurement tool.
The authors try to emphasize the importance of new growth dynamics for containerization not just for being a transport unit but also as a supply or commodity chain unit as well. The group of authors also briefly explain that Containerized freight is commonly characterized by the movement of manufactured goods and parts from manufacturing facilities to retail activities with the whole range of distribution activities in between, such as terminals and distribution centers. The way containerized freight is used is a benefit in multiple ways from the space flexibility to movement of goods shown in terms of distribution efficiency. Containerization dynamics has for some time relied on a variety of factors that are noted as being derived volume linked with globalization, the substitution of break-bulk traffic into