New GPS Time Study: What they are not telling you

[grgrcr88]

Enjoy it while it lasts.

Those numbers are entirely arbitrary and can be changed at the whim of the company. You will have no recourse.

I am in a similar situation at the moment, for whatever reason it has been decided that my work will be given a fairly realistic allowance. It didnt use to be that way. I didnt recognize the numbers when they were rigged against me, and I dont recognize them now. For all I know I will show up at work tomorrow and find out that I have lost an hour or two, and it will be like "old times" all over again.

The key is to detach yourself from any concern for the allowances. To me, they might as well be lottery numbers. I dont play the lottery, so I dont really care what they are.

Amen to that, several years ago when the allowance was changed for the piece count, I lost $10,000 pay by the and of the year. I was making about 1.5 to 2hrs a day bonus. Changed the allowance and boom overallowed,overnight. Not much you can do about it, I did not change my ways at all. All the sudden my 9.5 to 10hr plan was under 8 plan. Now of coarse they have to add work to get my 8.5 to 9hr range. I was running over 9.5, overallowed and being harrased daily. Next thing you know we have the GPS timestudy and BINGO, I gain about an hour. I still have not changed a thing but now I make bonus again. I, like you, do not care one bit about their over/under crap.

 

[pretzel_man]

Since you are an expert on how time studies work, why then is PDF (Personal, Delay, and Fatigue) added? Is the time for the items you mentioned larger than the PDF the TSO adds?

P-Man

Time allowed for folding in the mirror: none.
Time allowed for putting out a cone; none.
Time allowed for putting the package in a bag to keep it dry; none.
Time allowed for locating an out-of-sight, dry location to release package; none.
Time allowed for walking around the car to make sure the kid you saw behind you isnt hiding someplace; none.
Time allowed for getting out to check clearance when forced to back up in an unfamiliar location; none.
Time allowed for going back to change the delivery notices you left at 4 different apartments because you tried to indirect and the manager was out to lunch; none.
Time allowed for making 3 indirect delivery attempts on a signature required package; none.
Time allowed for making 2 or 3 dozen 8-point turnarounds because your non-power steering pkg car has the turning radius of an aircraft carrier; none.
Time allowed for driving 5 miles uphill in 2nd gear at 11 MPH because your non power-steering pkg car is so underpowered that it cant get out of its own way; none.
Time allowed for bagging smalls; none.
Time allowed for correcting invoice errors on an international shipment; none.
Time allowed for applying highlight tape to all 6 sides of an over-70 lb package; none.
Time allowed for waiting for a customer to fill out ASD's and waybills for an on-call air; none.
Time allowed for waiting for a customer to finish printing the online end-of-day report to scan; none.
Time allowed for sorting and re-handling the 40 stops that you are sent to take off of an overdispatched driver; none.
Time allowed for looking in a map book in an unfamiliar area; none.
Time allowed for verifying the address on a house that doesnt have a visible number; none.
Time allowed for sorting your load when preload forces 400 packages into your P-800; none.
Time allowed for reading and responding to text messages in the DIAD from the center; none.

In I.E. world, none of these things are necessary so there is no need to allow any time for them.
In I.E. world, all the allowances are fair and realistic, and every day is sunshine and lollypops.

Isnt I.E. world a lovely place?

 

[pretzel_man]

p-man, so would having a car that is cubed out on a daily basis be a basis for having a variance on a route? Selection time will be nothing close compared to someone with a walkthrough with proper load quality. If your answer is yes, what would the first step be to get something like that done???

Cold,

Generally, no....

If I were the IE manager I would not apply for a variance unless it could be proven to be totally out of the control of the operations / district. Let me explain...

Work measurement is meant to measure the job, not the employee. This is a failing of how its used at UPS. Just because a driver is overallowed, this does not mean its his / her fault. A poor trace, poor load, or poor dispatch will cause overallowed and its not the driver's fault.

Therefore, variances are generally applied for cases where the job setup cannot be controlled by UPS. The best argument for a variance for a packed car would be that the building is over capacity. If there are no car positiions available and no reasonable way to right size the car, then the argument could be made.

Still not likely to be applied...

P-Man

 

[Scanthis]

I gained time. My study was over a year ago but I remember the center team trying to get the route driver on the route the day the study was done. It makes no sense for the center managment team to want someone to run my route "quicker" then me. The center team has to answer if I am over allowed so it would benefit the center if I did gain time. I gained about 25 minutes. It's nice now because I get almost an hour of bonus every day.

 

[soberups]

Since you are an expert on how time studies work, why then is PDF (Personal, Delay, and Fatigue) added? Is the time for the items you mentioned larger than the PDF the TSO adds?

P-Man

I'm not an expert on how time studies "work".

I do, however, have 23 years of experience in how they dont work.

To answer your question....if it is deemed necessary to create an allowance for "personal delay and fatigue"....it in no way changes the fact that many of the elements I described have no time allowed for them even though they are a necessary function of the job.

It is fundamentally dishonest and unfair to place an expectation upon someone...under threat of disciplinary action.... without giving them the time and resources to fullfill that expectation.

It is fundamentally dishonest and unfair to hold a person accountable to an arbitrary "standard"....that cannot be challenged or verified, and that will never be corrected no matter how demonstrably flawed it is proven to be.

The majority of "studies" are flawed in the company's favor. They create a "standard" that can only be met by working off of the clock. Only an idiot would believe that this merely a convenient coincidence.

 

[soberups]

Work measurement is meant to measure the job, not the employee. This is a failing of how its used at UPS. Just because a driver is overallowed, this does not mean its his / her fault. A poor trace, poor load, or poor dispatch will cause overallowed and its not the driver's fault.

Good luck trying to explain this fact to one's management team.

In the real world....we are dispatched based upon the planned day. We are judged by our planned day. We are held accountable for our performance based upon the planned day. We are harrassed, ridden with, and issued warning letters based upon the planned day.

The time study is a square peg, the real world is a round hole, and the only tool that management has to fix the problem is a hammer.

 

[soberups]

Therefore, variances are generally applied for cases where the job setup cannot be controlled by UPS. The best argument for a variance for a packed car would be that the building is over capacity. If there are no car positiions available and no reasonable way to right size the car, then the argument could be made.

Still not likely to be applied...

P-Man

Poorly designed/overcrowded facilities are the norm at UPS, not the exception. Same thing with undersized or obsolete package cars.

It is fundamentally unfair and dishonest to base ones expectations upon an "ideal" world rather than the real world that most of us work in.

As far as getting a "variance" based upon these conditions...for 99.999% of drivers, a "variance" is nothing more than a myth, a fairy tale. It will never happen.

 

[pretzel_man]

I'm not an expert on how time studies "work".

I do, however, have 23 years of experience in how they dont work.

To answer your question....if it is deemed necessary to create an allowance for "personal delay and fatigue"....it in no way changes the fact that many of the elements I described have no time allowed for them even though they are a necessary function of the job.

It is fundamentally dishonest and unfair to place an expectation upon someone...under threat of disciplinary action.... without giving them the time and resources to fullfill that expectation.

It is fundamentally dishonest and unfair to hold a person accountable to an arbitrary "standard"....that cannot be challenged or verified, and that will never be corrected no matter how demonstrably flawed it is proven to be.

The majority of "studies" are flawed in the company's favor. They create a "standard" that can only be met by working off of the clock. Only an idiot would believe that this merely a convenient coincidence.

You don't know how it works, but you are sure that its skewed in the company's favor. In fact you believe that is due to a conspiracy.

You don't know how much time PDF adds, but you are sure it does not account for what you do.

You say that time studies generate the dispatch, but they do not.

Lots of drivers are scratch or underallowed. Lots of time studies have been updated and give drivers more time. (yours included).

You say that they are used to evaluate drivers. You are correct there... I agree that time studies alone should not be used to evaluate a driver's performance. I have consistently said that.

Its not a 100% perfect system. No system in existence is. It is not random as you assert. There is a library in Atlanta where the backup for every allowance is kept. I've seen it. There are video tapes where the allowances were drawn from. There are fine people with high integrity that develop and maintain those allowances.

Just because you want to believe that allowances are the result of an evil empire does not make it so.

I wonder if the union ever asked to be taught how time studies worked and see the process? I wonder what UPS would say. I am all for that transparency. I don't think ignorance is bliss.

P-Man

 

[Coldworld]

Cold,

Generally, no....

If I were the IE manager I would not apply for a variance unless it could be proven to be totally out of the control of the operations / district. Let me explain...

Work measurement is meant to measure the job, not the employee. This is a failing of how its used at UPS. Just because a driver is overallowed, this does not mean its his / her fault. A poor trace, poor load, or poor dispatch will cause overallowed and its not the driver's fault.

Therefore, variances are generally applied for cases where the job setup cannot be controlled by UPS. The best argument for a variance for a packed car would be that the building is over capacity. If there are no car positiions available and no reasonable way to right size the car, then the argument could be made.

Still not likely to be applied...

P-Man

Well, unless there is a car larger than p1200 that I dont know about, it makes no sense to complain. Unfortunately, having other drivers in the same vehicle size with less stops and much less work getting bonus while others are filled to the brim cubed out EVERY day an hour + over is total BS and there should be some way to address it without extra ojs rides where the sup knows there is a problem but doesnt want to take a stop or two off. I tend to agree with sober on some of this. Also most management wouldnt think an overallowed problem is the load or poor dispatch..sorry p-man, it almost is ALWAYS the drivers fault...at least in my experience.

 

[govols019]

"it almost is ALWAYS the drivers fault...at least in my experience."

You should remove the almost from that sentence. I don't doubt P-man's sincerity and belief in what he is saying but we, the drivers, have a totally different experience.

Fact is, you get consistently harassed about over-allowed regardless of the reason.

 

[Coldworld]

"it almost is ALWAYS the drivers fault...at least in my experience."

You should remove the almost from that sentence. I don't doubt P-man's sincerity and belief in what he is saying but we, the drivers, have a totally different experience.

Fact is, you get consistently harassed about over-allowed regardless of the reason.

True I should restate that...even if they KNOW your truck is fked its always our problem. thats probably my #1 issue with this company.

 

[UnconTROLLed]

As I recall, you are correct. All they are doing is trying to measure walk distances. They look at a satellite image and put a mark at the car park location and at the delivery location. The distance between them is walk distance.
  They will look at the GPS reading of Scan, Sig, Stop Complete to see where you were and then move the points.  (I honestly don't remember if they use the DIAD 1 second readings or not.) The key is that they move the points to reflect where you park and walk to.  It may be worth asking the local IE guy to show you. Its really a very nice system.  P-Man

They are not actually marking the true walk path like the timestudies of a few years ago. It is straight line to front door from midpoint of the street/road. There is a factor that compensates for the obvious difference, based on class of walk 1,2, etc.... Interestingly enough, the per package allowance on both pickup and delivery is partially based on size of package car (P500 has different allowance than P1200). Most centers that I have known of gain. This all might be moot if we truly go to a P&L model at the center level. We may find out some of the things we thought were so important may not be. I personally cannot think of a better way to measure a service providers efficiency than some combination of SPORH, NDPPH, and Ov/UN.

Pressure and lying, isn't the model already in place?

 

[trplnkl]

You don't know how it works, but you are sure that its skewed in the company's favor. In fact you believe that is due to a conspiracy.

You don't know how much time PDF adds, but you are sure it does not account for what you do.

You say that time studies generate the dispatch, but they do not.

Lots of drivers are scratch or underallowed. Lots of time studies have been updated and give drivers more time. (yours included).

You say that they are used to evaluate drivers. You are correct there... I agree that time studies alone should not be used to evaluate a driver's performance. I have consistently said that.

Its not a 100% perfect system. No system in existence is. It is not random as you assert. There is a library in Atlanta where the backup for every allowance is kept. I've seen it. There are video tapes where the allowances were drawn from. There are fine people with high integrity that develop and maintain those allowances.

Just because you want to believe that allowances are the result of an evil empire does not make it so.

I wonder if the union ever asked to be taught how time studies worked and see the process? I wonder what UPS would say. I am all for that transparency. I don't think ignorance is bliss.

P-Man

OK, the music has stopped and it's time to stop dancing.
Does the PDF take care of the "Time allowed for " list that sober posted or not? Joe gets 150 stops that shows to be a 9.5 day, yet it actually takes Joe 10 hours to do this work. Part of the 10 hours of Joes day is spent preforming the some of the tasks on Sober's list. Who/what is to blame for Joe's over allowed performance?

Time studies may not generate the dispatch, but that is what they are used for in the centers. If it takes 100 stops for a route to dispatch to an 8 hour day, isn't that determined by the stime study? They then proceed to add a few more stops to the dispatch to account for a possible few less miles driven. Then, some one has decided that they want a 9.5 hour minimum dispatch one all routes, so they add more stops to accomplish this goal. All the decisions of how many stops to add are based on the time study.
You said,''You say that they are used to evaluate drivers. You are correct there... I agree that time studies alone should not be used to evaluate a driver's performance. I have consistently said that.". But the management team uses the over/under for driver evaluation and not much of anything else unless someone calls BS and then they switch to SPORH of something else. All of this is driven by time studies, regardless of the initial intent of time studoes. It may not be the way it supposed to be but that is real life.

The end story is, the only thing a driver can do is continually fight with management just to keep his/her job. Geeez, that's a life every one wants.

 

[pretzel_man]

OK, the music has stopped and it's time to stop dancing.
Does the PDF take care of the "Time allowed for " list that sober posted or not? Joe gets 150 stops that shows to be a 9.5 day, yet it actually takes Joe 10 hours to do this work. Part of the 10 hours of Joes day is spent preforming the some of the tasks on Sober's list. Who/what is to blame for Joe's over allowed performance?

Time studies may not generate the dispatch, but that is what they are used for in the centers. If it takes 100 stops for a route to dispatch to an 8 hour day, isn't that determined by the stime study? They then proceed to add a few more stops to the dispatch to account for a possible few less miles driven. Then, some one has decided that they want a 9.5 hour minimum dispatch one all routes, so they add more stops to accomplish this goal. All the decisions of how many stops to add are based on the time study.
You said,''You say that they are used to evaluate drivers. You are correct there... I agree that time studies alone should not be used to evaluate a driver's performance. I have consistently said that.". But the management team uses the over/under for driver evaluation and not much of anything else unless someone calls BS and then they switch to SPORH of something else. All of this is driven by time studies, regardless of the initial intent of time studoes. It may not be the way it supposed to be but that is real life.

The end story is, the only thing a driver can do is continually fight with management just to keep his/her job. Geeez, that's a life every one wants.

While you want to make this a dance, the truth is that there is not a simple yes / no answer to the question. If you forced me to answer yes or no, then I would have to say that yes, the time is accounted for.

Here is what happens. When the allowances are worked up, lets say that it comes to an 8.5 planned day BEFORE PDF. (It does not really work this way, this is just illustrative). Additional time is added into the planned day BEFORE the allowance is generated.

It used to be 15%. I don't know how much additional time it is today. So, if the calculated allowance gave 8.5 hours of time, PDF would have added in an additional hour or so extra for undefined activities, delays, fatigue, and personal time.

As far as the dispatch goes, Ov / Un is added into the plan. If a route had a 9 hour planned day, but the driver is .4 over allowed, the dispatch would say that it was a 9.4 hour dispatch. It does NOT say that its a 9 hour dispatch.

P-Man

 

[brownrod]

I gained time. My study was over a year ago but I remember the center team trying to get the route driver on the route the day the study was done. It makes no sense for the center managment team to want someone to run my route "quicker" then me. The center team has to answer if I am over allowed so it would benefit the center if I did gain time. I gained about 25 minutes. It's nice now because I get almost an hour of bonus every day.

The bid driver on a route I cover told me that his driver sup once told him all the little tricks to pull in order to gain time if he ever gets time studied. Our managers want the time studies to end up in the drivers favor. They don't care if the time studies are completely wrong. They just want to look good on paper.

They would rather have a slug of a driver in full slacker mode making bonus daily than a hard working, honest driver overallowed. They don't care at all what's in the best interest of the company. They only care about looking good on paper.

 

[brownrod]

Just because you want to believe that allowances are the result of an evil empire does not make it so.

I wonder if the union ever asked to be taught how time studies worked and see the process? I wonder what UPS would say. I am all for that transparency. I don't think ignorance is bliss.

P-Man

A driver putting out his normal effort can look like a stud and command a cavalcade of high fives from management if he is underallowed one day.
That same driver maybe on the same route or a different route but putting out the same effort can then come in overallowed and all of the sudden he is a turd that is stealing from the company and needs to be disciplined.

This is reality. That is why drivers don't trust the time studies or anyone in IE.

 

[pretzel_man]

A driver putting out his normal effort can look like a stud and command a cavalcade of high fives from management if he is underallowed one day.
That same driver maybe on the same route or a different route but putting out the same effort can then come in overallowed and all of the sudden he is a turd that is stealing from the company and needs to be disciplined.

This is reality. That is why drivers don't trust the time studies or anyone in IE.

If in the situation you mention, the two routes have the same load quality, same quality of dispatch, same quality of trace, same amount of missorts, etc., then there is something wrong with the time study.

From my experience, those things I mentioned (which are out of the drivers' control) are the biggest factor in overallowed.

A manger that manages only by overallowed, is the problem....

P-Man

 

[ddomino]

Does anyone remember 2004, July in our division, when the company reduced across the board the allowance for a delivery package by 5.8 seconds? If you deliver only 220 packages a day you loose over 1.5 hours per week. At least 69 hours per year, depending on how many vacation weeks you have. All at time and a half. 69 hours times $45.00 is $3105.00. All numbers are rounded but you get the idea. 69,000 drivers loosing 5.8 seconds per package means a windfall to their bottom line. Millions and millions of dollars by reducing only by 5.8 seconds. Then in 2007 or 2008 we had our live time study, person, clipboard, and stopwatch, and overall the center gained 5-10 minutes. We did have a virtual study but I don't have those results. We do more work but gain less and less or flat out loose.

 

[705red]

Does anyone remember 2004, July in our division, when the company reduced across the board the allowance for a delivery package by 5.8 seconds? If you deliver only 220 packages a day you loose over 1.5 hours per week. At least 69 hours per year, depending on how many vacation weeks you have. All at time and a half. 69 hours times $45.00 is $3105.00. All numbers are rounded but you get the idea. 69,000 drivers loosing 5.8 seconds per package means a windfall to their bottom line. Millions and millions of dollars by reducing only by 5.8 seconds. Then in 2007 or 2008 we had our live time study, person, clipboard, and stopwatch, and overall the center gained 5-10 minutes. We did have a virtual study but I don't have those results. We do more work but gain less and less or flat out loose.

That only applies to bonus drivers, if you are an over allowed driver which many of the drivers are today your making more money.

 

[runnin' late]

A few questions about these new time studies... #1 How do they know how far you walk once inside a bldg # When do you scan a pkg at a stop and complete it #3 How do they know when a hand truck was used at a stop #4 How do they know when you did an alt delivery attempt at a apt or house next door? Just a few to ponder about...