P-man,
I happy to learn somebody agrees pick-up compliance should not be the "be all and end all" of how run my route. Less recently, I would record pick-ups when I wasn't even at the stop just to staisfy this ridiculous goal for accounts that don't care.
I stopped doing this because its not an accurate record of my day and I don't want to go down that path. I now record as I do the pick-up. Except for the handful that want and need a specific time, my other pick-up times can vary as much as hour depending on the volume and the splits I'm given.
What's been happening recently is the OMS has been changing the PU times on her own. I'm guessing she is looking at times for the prior week and trying to get the times right. Its a futile effort. I can't believe we are paying someone to play with my pick-up times when it means absolutely NOTHING to my customers.
Brownie:
Please, please, properly record pickups at the time you are at the stop.
I've seen drivers improperly record their pickup time just to please this stupid metric. It does two bad things.
First, the driver puts him/herself in a bad spot. They can easily be disciplined for dishonestly. Second, it give management a false sense of what their dictate is costing.
In essence, if drivers really tried to get to every pickup within a 30 or 60 minute window, we will greatly increase time and miles. When a driver misrecords the pickup time, corporate thinks they can have their number without the additional cost.
I think corporate will need to understand that the metric can be met, but at substantial additional cost.
Here is the answer.... Pickups should be grouped into different types with different monitoring.
There are core accounts that should have pickups at a designated pickup time. They should be monitored for compliance.
There are on area pickups that should be monitored to see they are picked up on trace only.
There are normal customers that just need a pickup after 2:30 and before their close time.
UPS stores need a pickup 30 minutes before close time.
Finally, drop boxes need to be picked up anytime after the scheduled pickup time.
I don't know why this is hard to do. It seems logical and I think our drivers and customers would understand it.
I'm hoping that "green" pickups shed some light on the situation. Green pickup will be much harder to execute than people think.
P-Man