While everyone takes this opportunity to bash UPS management and technology, let me provide some facts:
Telematics
Telematics sites show safety improvements, reduced automotive expense, and less road calls.
There have been small performance gains, very few disciplinary actions taken and one termination that I'm aware of.
Its saving UPS money in Automotive and so far allowing supervisors to move to a "virtual OJS" therefore reducing their time.
As Sober said, its not 100% accurate and if a supervisor should NOT discipline anyone based on those areas of inaccuracy.
All in all its an outstanding system and more advancements and improvements will come.
PAS
PAS sites show substantial service improvements, visibility improvements, and miles reduction. PAS has been measured and has shown that overall miles have been reduced by 30 million per year.
A relatively large percent of sites (maybe 30%) have not seen the gains as the others. From my experience, this is mostly due to poor management. They leave inaccurate information in the system and this causes packages to be either on the wrong car, wrong place in trace, or wrong place in the car.
These sites probably need to start over. The system is very easy to use but the user needs to understand dispatch concepts. Its kind of like giving a person Excel who doesn't know mathematic concepts. Good tool but poor outcome.
DIAD IV
It was revolutionary for its time. It started development about 7 years ago and was leading edge. The shift key was a necessity due to keeping the keys the size they are and reducing the size of the unit.
Maybe they should have made the keys smaller? I saw a picture of a DIAD IV with smaller keys and no shift key. From what I've seen the shift key, although a nuisance is not really that big a problem. 95% of our drivers are on EDD. They key much less than before EDD.
That leaves the key entry to be mostly in signature clarify (which is all alpha), and text messages. I teach drivers to use the it like a shift key instead of a toggle. It seems to be less of a problem
I think the signature key is the bigger problem. Maybe they should make you have to double click it or change something else in software to fix it.
BTW, from what I've seen, DIAD V won't have a shift key and will be smaller than a DIAD IV. The keys will be smaller. I hope that won't cause a new set of complaints.
My point is that UPS technology is not perfect. No technology is. UPS technology however goes through tremendous scrutiny before its built and deployed.
If someone tells you something is a "silver bullet", don't believe them. If someone tells you that technology is being deployed for ego or career purposes, don't believe them either.
Everything is a balance. Not all good or bad. If someone tells you otherwise, they have an agenda.
P-Man