Extreme automation: FedEx Ground hubs speed deliveries - Computerworld
In the past six years, FedEx Ground has fully automated 53 of its terminals and opened nine new hubs, such as the 600,000-plus-square-foot Hagerstown facility, which has been expanded twice since it opened in 2005. The business result: FedEx Ground has gained market share for 25 consecutive quarters, notes Spangler.
The much larger, $49.5 billion United Parcel Service, which is FedEx Ground's chief competitor, has "a similar level of automation," says Satish Jindel, president of SJ Consulting Group, a transportation and logistics consultancy in Sewickley, Pa.
But there's one big factor that differentiates FedEx Ground in the automation wars: the level of vendor independence and control it has in choosing the sorting and scanning systems and the other pieces of material-handling equipment that make up its proprietary Integrated Sortation System, or ISS.
In the past six years, FedEx Ground has fully automated 53 of its terminals and opened nine new hubs, such as the 600,000-plus-square-foot Hagerstown facility, which has been expanded twice since it opened in 2005. The business result: FedEx Ground has gained market share for 25 consecutive quarters, notes Spangler.
The much larger, $49.5 billion United Parcel Service, which is FedEx Ground's chief competitor, has "a similar level of automation," says Satish Jindel, president of SJ Consulting Group, a transportation and logistics consultancy in Sewickley, Pa.
But there's one big factor that differentiates FedEx Ground in the automation wars: the level of vendor independence and control it has in choosing the sorting and scanning systems and the other pieces of material-handling equipment that make up its proprietary Integrated Sortation System, or ISS.
