Back to the original message about time studies. I have seen in our building that our wonderful IE department is in a world of their own. I am speaking from a hub perspective.
Our IE department has recently seen a turnover rate that I have never heard of at UPS. The manager quit along with several supervisors. Now we have people who have no experience with UPS, who were hired off the street because they have degrees. They are the ones who are in charge of getting sort charts correct, planning how we should operate, and a variety of other things (unkonwn to those in the real UPS.) They have not "grown up with UPS" and frankly do not have a clue. Then they report to the higher ups that the people in the hubs are not doing the job.
Well, in my opionion, they can take the IE department and send them to another business. They walk around in their suit and tie and point out things that are wrong with the operation, but cannot offer any advice to fix it, other than tell them to do the job. They do not account for the fatigue factor, the human factor, the other factors beyond our control, the volume availabitly factor, the new hire factor, or anything else. If it works on paper, then dog gone it, it should work in practice. They also project the volume to be processed every day, and get mad when production numbers do not match their plan. Well, most of the time their planned volume is off by 3000 to 4000 pieces per night either higher or lower. How can you plan to run an operation when 1/4 of your planned volume does not appear. You plan staffing on their volume projections and either way you are screwed. Not only that, but they do not take into consideration that nearly everyday, half of the feeder arrivals are late, and atleast 1 of the aircraft are late, so you can be clean throughout the first half of the night. People standing around ready to go home, then you get freakin hammered and you pull late because everything hits at one time.
Same goes for the time studies. You are planned to deliver a set number of stops per hour, but they don't take into consideration other drivers, on road situations that you cannot avoid, or even bulk stops, which is technically one stop but could have 20 to 30 packages or more (still one stop).
IE needs to go back and make sure the charts are correct, put the drop boxes where they need to be, and stop bothering the workers. There are some drivers and hub employees who may be playing the system, but it seems that IE only concentrates on the good ones who do the job and do not need time studies done on them.
It may seem that I am bashing IE, but they really need to get in touch with the real UPS.