BALTIMORE, MD, December 8, 2022 – New audio is available for media use featuring Ranganath Nuggehalli. He’s the principal scientist at UPS. He speaks about how UPS meets the holiday peak season demand. This content is provided by INFORMS, the largest association for the decision and data sciences. What follows are four questions and responses. These responses were provided on December 8, 2022.
Question 1: What are the most common supply chain-to-consumer challenges this holiday season?
Time Cue: :19, Soundbite Duration: :42
“Generally, in the holiday season, the supply chain problems come to like three categories. One, not having the availability of material at the production level, whether it's like Amazon or somebody producing it, that's one side of it. And second from producer to the consumer, how do we ship it? Shipping is a problem. The third one, which is usually not controllable, is going to be the mother nature. Christmas season. Most of the time it snows and depending on the weather it could be a number of problems. Sometimes you could have significant delays. These are the three supply chain problems, not any different for any this holiday season compared to any previous holiday season.”
Question 2: How is UPS addressing those challenges?
Time Cue: 1:12, Soundbite Duration: :59
“One thing we try to do is prepare. The holiday season is very important for us. We start planning way advance. We start planning for the holiday season as early as January. And one thing we have been doing now is collaborating with our shippers. We continuously monitor what are the volumes coming in, what is going to be the demand on the UPS system. Everything. So, we try to be anticipating the demands and sometimes that could be last minute demand and other things. And because of the mother nature, we try to hire extra people. For example, this season we are hiring about 100,000 extra helpers just for the holiday season to help us with the anticipated surge demand. Also, one of the other things that's helping is our advanced systems. We have got advanced information systems and also automated sorting system and other things and that are helping us quite a bit in terms of elevating this sudden surge in the demand.”
Question 3: The holiday season is the busiest time of the year for shippers, from consumer-to-consumer to business-to-business. What is the key for UPS to optimize its performance during this time?
Time Cue: 02:17, Soundbite Duration: :57
“Use advanced data analytics, AI and automation to process more volume efficiently and reliability with our customers. And this is, again, coming back, it's very important for us during the holiday season. Predicting how much and what packages may enter our network is even more important during the peak holiday season. And also, advanced technology is critical to increase the visibility and the control over what is coming in, and where it is getting stuck, and what are the bottlenecks. And our optimization system which has gotten worldwide recognition. We use our optimization system to make sure all the things are processed and moved efficiently. In 2021, UPS had one of the industry’s highest on-time delivery performance with about 96.9% of packages delivered on time for the peak period of November 28th through December 24th. We plan to equal or better this performance this year.”
Question 4: What should consumers do now to avoid any problems getting their shipments to their intended destinations on time?
Time Cue: 03:29, Soundbite Duration: 1:18
“There are three things probably. It's not just for the holiday season, it applies to any other time, too, but during the holiday season it becomes more critical. First is plan well in advance because we cannot anticipate unanticipated surge in that demand and other things, and it could be a problem. If you can ship ahead of time, please do that. And if you are shipping it yourself, there are a couple of things you can do. One is to use a good shipping carton. Always use the cartons as much as possible. However, you have to make sure that the carton is in a good condition and can support the weight of the thing that you are shipping. If the carton breaks down, then that delays the shipping, because somebody will have to take it out and repackage it. And the third thing, make sure the address is correct and legible. Even though people think that their address is correct, sometimes it not be exactly clear. Either the zip code is wrong or the street name and other things. So please pay attention to the address. One more thing I suggest is keep an address label inside the package in case something happens to the address label and the carton is damaged or something. That way we can immediately open the container and see what is the address that was intended, we can take immediate action quickly. These are the three things I encourage everybody to do.”
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Ashley Smith
Public Affairs Coordinator
INFORMS
Catonsville, MD
[email protected]
443-757-3578