Pas system

upsgirl23: dont get me wrong because I like the system, but your statement that drivers get to go home early is completely wrong. since getting
pas and
edd the drivers in our center who were running a certain number of stops are now running more with less time allowance. we are all getting home quite later than we were.

That too was the thought about relooping our center. Cut costs, cut miles, cut paid days. While I have not seen the cost figures, the miles are up, the paid days are through the roof, and customer satifaction is at an all time low. And the ERA's over the past 4 years have showed it. Funny thing is I asked about ours last week, and was told they needed to break the numbers down for our center. As soon as they get that done they will post our numbers. I didnt know it took UPS that long to handle numbers

d

UPS79 - I agree. I'm field testing again in a building that is implementing PAS and EDD. It's a mess, but not because PAS/EDD aren't good systems. It's the people behind the plans. I did a mini study on PAS/EDD errors when we did the beta testing for EDD. I tracked 472 label errors - 400 were human error. Only 2% were system. The remainder were customer and/or other errors. I think the thread of my statement was that if the systems were implemented correctly, then the drivers should get to go home early along with servicing our customers and making money. I don't believe I said it was happening now, however, if that is what I inferred, I apologize. Implemented correctly, that is what those systems will accomplish. It would seem to be to be in everyone's interest to work out the kinks in their own buildings. I stand by my statements - DPS/PAS/EDD are supposed to accomplish everything I said - but, they are only as good as the people implenting the plans. If no one wants to do the grunt work, no one reaps the benefits.

And thank you for saying you like the systems. It's nice to not have someone tell me it stinks for a change.

we have had the system for several months now, I am telling you none of us are going home early. all that has happened is that low numbers and high numbers for dispatching have increased. i ask a part time supervisor about the target dispatch numbers and he said we aim to dispatch these numbers. my question to him was once in a while could you dispatch one stop over the low number instead of constantly dispatching one stop below the high number.

oh by the way the reason I like the system is because I spent considerable time with the individual working with are dol's to get my route right.

"could you dispatch one stop over the low number instead of constantly dispatching one stop below the high number."

My target range is 74-85. Dispatch is 100-130 every day. What are you whining about? I would love to have 84 stops a day, every day. I would get in at 5-530 every day, and give my UPS store pickup to someone else.

d

We understand the stop count here to be what it is. It's called the stop count because the pre-loaders stop counting. I know it's a tough job, but I would really like to ask my loader how many stops I have and not have him say,"I stopped counting at 60, or 80, or whatever."
When I was in a P10 they stopped counting at 120 and most days it turned into 150. It's hard to dispatch a center with stop counts that are not even close.

Thats a funny one dammor, I feel the pain just like you.I like when you ask the loader how many stops are in the truck and he replies"What do you think is in the truck?"

dannyboy: i don't think i was whinning, i was only telling the truth as it happens in our center. maybe when you are 56 and have delivered packages for 25 years, you will surely whine getting off and on that truck 180 times a day.

DANNYBOY SORRY I JUST READ ON ANOTHER THREAD THAT YOU HAVE BEEN WITH THE COMPANY 30 YEARS. IS THERE ANY REASON WHY YOU HAVE NOT OPTED FOR RETIREMENT(NOT BEING A WISE xxx, JUST WONDERING WHY YOU GET IN AND OFF THAT TRUCK AT ALL.

My husband is a manager in charge of implementing PAS in our district.
His team is just about to finish up with their 2nd installation. The biggest problem that they are having is getting the center management to help with the loops. They do not want to spend any time learning the system and helping the PAS team. The whole atmosphere at the current center is very negative, starting with the management all the way down. They do not want the PAS system there and they are only cooperating when they are forced too. Very, very frustrating. The installation is going to happen. Wishing it way doesn't work, so why not help so that it is done the right way to begin with?

I run about 185 miles a day or 130 miles on area and deliver to 6 different towns and 5 different zip codes. Every day I do my route completely different. Sometimes it's because of airs, sometimes because of bulk. There are weather considerations also that affect how the route is done. When it snows, I have to juggle when I venture up the mountain. We have commitment times for pickups as well as deliveries.
If PAS were to work properly, it would have to consider every variable. I don't see this happening. Also, if the system is relying on sups or managers to set up loops for routes they have no clue about this certainly will not turn out to be very efficient. It looks to be just one more big mess that management will expect us to clean up!

rd0127 that is an unfortunate situation and as a driver I'm discouraged enough by the thought of management not being able to communicate amongst thier own.Once a precedent such as that has been set,pretty soon everybody else starts acting like they have a liscense not give a hoot.

I can't pretend to know all the nuances of your husband's current dilemna,but I can say that the prospect of having to convert to PAS a week after daylight savings and less than a month before peak season arrives would irk the you-know-what out of any center management team.If there was ever a time not to turn a center upside down and on it's ear for a system that obviously can't perform anywhere near to the praise that's preceded it's arrival it would have to be now.

This circus is coming to my town in June of next year,and if they would let me I'd burn every vacation I had to help set the thing up so that it would actually stand a chance of being adequate.But I'm not sure that this endeavor was ever meant to help make it easier for the people that are stuck working with it(or around it as some of the posts I'm reading seem to indicate).From where I stand the idea behind this creation seems to have been "Lets cut the payroll on the preload,cut the number of loads to save more on labor and if we accomplish that,then we may get around to actually trying to make it work".

I can already see two obstacles in the way of it working in my building.First off,every truck on the boxline I walk down each morning is jammed 100% full with overflow from two or three piled neck high on the belt.If the idea behind this is to cut the number of cars dispatched and pile more packages on fewer drivers,than

every driver with a P10 would have to be upgraded to a P12 and we all know that's never going to happen.Second,my on-car sup who recently recieved training on the implementataion of the whole thing is no longer part of our center.He got a promotion to center manager in the building across town.While I'm happy for him(he was a class act and his performance was truly exceptional)there's no getting around that a vital cog to our success is missing.

As much as I empathize with your hubby's frustration(lack of teamwork really gets under my skin too),it could be the center team he's having fits getting thru to is feeling it's the straw that's gonna break the camel's back come December.There's no excuse for opening this big of a can of worms on any center team and it's drivers at such a precarious time of year.

UPS79

No problem. Stopcounts are a joke in most areas. I classify the statement "planned day" allong with clasics like "military intellegence".
Its funny how management can plan your day down to the second, but when you roll in in ten hours with 13 hours worth of work they seem so suprised.

YEah I am a glutton for punishment. All of my part time years didnt count toward my retirement as a full timer. So 843 working days left so I can count 30 full time years. Thankyou UPS and Teamsters for the extra time. Maybe in the last 4 years I will make a difference, or drive several members of management crazy trying.

d

Dannyboy,

Although off subject for this thread, have you contacted the DOL about your potentially lost pension credits? I think it deserves clarification. ERISA was passed in 1974 and generally speaking, the provisions of the law, according to my ACLU guide on the subject, didn't kick in until January 1976. Furthermore, the book says, "Before ERISA, plans could provide extremely stringent vesting requirements or for none at all." (The Basic ACLU Guide to the Rights of Employees & Union Members, 2nd Edition, 1994, p85) Additionally, "prior to 1985, pension plans could require employees to be at least 25 years old in order to enter the plan." (Footnote 5, p100) Now, according to p80, "Generally, you must have completed one year of service with the sponsoring employer and must be over 21 years old to participate." Sorry about the diversion guys and now back to the thread.

The PAS system is supposed to have a "dispatch supervisor." Have any of you who have PAS talked to that person in your center about what is wrong with your route?

I have read many messages on this board, there are many good posts. The bottom line on the pas/edd subjedct is cost savings per center. The center I work at has been initiating pas/edd in the last few weeks, You ask why now before peek ? Look at the big picture here. The center took away 5.8 seconds per package on del. pkgs. allowances. That cost me 50 mnts per day, on my 500+ per day pkg count. The first day I thought I would give them the benifit and try to do what many of us do, skip lunch and see what the numbers were in the morning. I was totally shocked, I ran a 11.40 day and was .40 over. My center mng accused me of laying down on the job.It is funny I have consistantly ran under for 22 years. The ultimate phillosophy behind EDD is to make us all generic. They will be able to have unskilled people load and drive the rts , If we strike in the future. Yes , you will loose you bonus little by little, They are counting on those Drivers that run big bonus to continue working themselves to death, because we are programd , and have the best work ethic in the world.I have since started taking my lunch, boy what a difference in mental stress, Boss is not happy, and I work until 8 to 1030 at night.Everyone is going to see a change in the system. 50% of us work past 7pm.I could go on and on. well I did , good luck at your centers, and watch you B/A smile when tou start saving them all that cash>

Thank god my contract has an excessive overtime clause that will keep management from holding us to impossible production levels caused by their own stupidity, laziness and incompetence. Most management will never be able to implement, fix or truly understand what is happening with this system. As they have always done, they will try to blame teamsters for its failure instead of themselves. Before, their numbers were a joke because they couldn't get our trucks loaded properly, make efficient dispatching decisions or resolve problems. Now, they will try to put more work on the cars and still fail at what they have always failed at. Most of us are an hour behind before we ever punch in because management doesn't do what they are supposed to. We will not sacrifice precious family time because management doesn't know what they are doing. We will just file grievances.

Interesting point. The grievance should actually be a means to resolve disputes for some its another way to gum up the works. The "lazy" managements response will probably end up being to give colossus warning letters everytime he turns around rather than ask him what the problem is. I can't see myself trying to fix too many of colossus problems when he has such a terrific attitude.

OK it's my turn now. We have had pas for about a month now. I like it, but we are a long way from where it needs to be to make it work right. I will list some of our problems: Packages are misloaded onto the wrong cars, PAL labels are placed on the wrong packages, usually the wrong city entirely, PAL labels have incorrect consignee address, when a package is scanned for the label an address pops up that is where they were 5 or 10 years ago so that is now the new destination for that package, Packages taken off the car for MOVED, REFUSED, etc end up on your car the next day because the clerks system is not integrated with the PAS even though they put the correct return address on the package, some of these packages recycle for more than a week (I'm not kidding), NDA packages are loaded in your load all the way to section 4 even if your car is cubed out, Packages are listed in EDD but are not on car, including Next Day Airs, Delivery Order Listings are not accurate. Those are just some of things we are going through now but there is probably more I just can't remember them all.
We are working with the company as much as we can to try to identify the many problems we are having on road, but we as drivers can't fix them all. I hate to say it but I know come next year the company will have a whole crew of people combing reports about late air and people driving out of trace and who knows what else. If they want to hand out warning letters and verbals we will push back because I don't see this stuff going away anytime soon. The quick fix will not be to discipline drivers the problems are way bigger than us.

Were not scheduled to get PAS until spring of ’04. Most of us have been bugging center management to correct our DOL’s and load diagrams. I realize the sups have as much spare time as I do currently, but come January the drivers will be pressing hard to get this done before EDD gets here.

Tie, I've had many a piece of trash manager try to fabricate stuff against me and fail. The reason they fail is that I do my job with total honesty and integrity and my customers love me. I've had a manager try to fire me for production after completely altering my route only for the three days of a ride, and another try to coerce customers to falsely file complaints against me. I refuse to act as many in management at UPS do. It's easy to beat people who lie and cheat, you just expose them for what they are. I'm doing my part to fix this horribly broken company. If many of you cowards in management did the same, that is stand up for what is right, just and honest we could transform UPS into a company that we could be proud of instead of one many of us have repugnance for.

If one of my piece of trashy management brothers would take your job that progression would happen much more quickly. Your crappy attitude does so much more to destroy this company then any of these alleged management folks you refer to. Your fight is within yourself not with this company.

I absolutly promise you, my brothers and sisters, the system does improve. 6 months plus now with the system and all those little annoying things start to smooth out. The wildest event was the day after turkeyday, two drivers on each belt pulled the entire flow to the proper vehicles. Driver sups had the routes broken down before we came in at 530 am rest of drivers in at 8, everyone on road by 830, unbelievable but true.
Keep in mind the people who will notice it the most is the person who doesnt run that route every day, as a 10 yr cover driver i rate this between the backing aide (cameras), and the new labels that allow DR anywhere.

DrColossus, looks like you struck a nerve! I agree with you totally! Be honest and truthful then everything will fall in-line. It's easy to get caught up into these games that UPS plays but when it's time for judgement I take comfort in knowing that I've tried to do right as a human being.