What's this?

Jackburton

Gone Fish'n
We've had these in the Roswell center since January. They are attached to front and back shelves. The technology was originally designed to have the labels with embedded tech to go off if the package enter the wrong vehicle. In true UPS style, they are half-assing it.

The current way they are used is each preloader has a set of cars, with a scanner attached to their belt. The preloader scans the barcode in your truck, assigning the scanner for that truck. If the scanner scans a package that doesn't belong to the truck, the scanner goes off. If the preloader enters a truck the scanner isn't assigned to, the scanner goes off.

The problem is now that preload is concerned with scans on packages and is judged as such. There's a report of the percentage of scans the preload does, and they chase those scans. So much so they have people that just go around, scan a pile of packages and walk away. The regular preloader then just loads as normal with a pile of packages or double scans them (doesn't hurt). This is of course the way to achieve a false positive, to keep the PPH up for the loaders. The system wasn't designed for that, but when you only care about numbers, that's what you get.

The Roswell preload since January has struggled with the demands of keeping up doing this scanning and maintaining YoY performance, unfortunately we have been floundering for the past 6 months with late leave building times due to preload not wrapping up. They are having preloader a doing another task while not increasing the workforce to accommodate the new task.

Used correctly I can see this tech being good, but it's not, and it isn't. Your preload and drivers will hate the day you go live with this.
 
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ManInBrown

Well-Known Member
What's the technology behind it then? How does it recognize that a package is on the wrong car? We have people going through cars with scanners trying to catch missloads, but they don't download those scanners until after the drivers leave the building.
They're not scanning to catch misloads. They scan the cars to see if drivers are flagging packages. If a package comes up without a scan then they know who took it for a ride. What they do doesn't even detect a misload. They aren't even looking at the PAL. Just scanning everything
 

Jackburton

Gone Fish'n
They're not scanning to catch misloads. They scan the cars to see if drivers are flagging packages. If a package comes up without a scan it might be a car they scanned and then they know who took it for a ride
Unfortunately, the way they are actually using it leaves this in the dust. Preload is more concerned about scanning than loading them. Preloaders/Sups go up and down the belt scanning packages and putting them in piles for the loaders to load, just adds another step to an already over complicated system, and isn't being used as designed.
 

Jackburton

Gone Fish'n
They are already killing our loaders.. lets make the job even harder...
It's why we can't keep people. The belt sups are put under pressure and transfer that pressure to the hourlies. We are trying to hire FT drivers in the center and we can't pull enough part timers up. I think we are to the point where you could walk in and go FT driving if you qualified.
 

ManInBrown

Well-Known Member
Unfortunately, the way they are actually using it leaves this in the dust. Preload is more concerned about scanning than loading them. Preloaders/Sups go up and down the belt scanning packages and putting them in piles for the loaders to load, just adds another step to an already over complicated system, and isn't being used as designed.
We're talking about 2 different things. A big problem in my center as I'm sure a lot of centers is discrepancies. So they have someone go around and randomly scan a cars load. They pick certain ones each day. They scan everything. But they're not looking for misloads. They don't even look at the PAL. Then the next day or whenever, let's say 15 packages didn't have a scan. They were taken for a ride. They go back and check the report of the cars they scan. To see if they can catch drivers taking misloads for a ride and not messaging them in
 

Box Ox

Well-Known Member
All the money in the world and we just had to have one more thing that hasn't been tested or well thought out. I look forward to its addition to the amazing reverse clusterbang that package delivery has already become at my center.

They are already killing our loaders.. lets make the job even harder...

Seriously. Most of the new hires willing to stick around as hourlies are terrible. Not just saying that. Poor load quality and misloads have skyrocketed. While at the same time, drivers are running on a system (ORION) that counts on ideal conditions to hit the right numbers. It's madness.
 

Jackburton

Gone Fish'n
We're talking about 2 different things. A big problem in my center as I'm sure a lot of centers is discrepancies. So they have someone go around and randomly scan a cars load. They pick certain ones each day. They scan everything. But they're not looking for misloads. They don't even look at the PAL. Then the next day or whenever, let's say 15 packages didn't have a scan. They were taken for a ride. They go back and check the report of the cars they scan. To see if they can catch drivers taking misloads for a ride and not messaging them in
You're referring to picking one car, perhaps a problem area with DNED's, and doing an audit scan before the driver leaves. If the driver didn't do a delivery scan and the package was scanned in the morning, they want to nail him with it


Now imagine that being done to every car, every day, without an increase to the workforce.

Yeah, it's like that....
 

Jackburton

Gone Fish'n
As a side note, we had these towers once, back about 2-4 years ago they tested. Some trucks had square readers, like the ones you use for key card doors attached to the side of the truck. Looked like they were trying to use the embedded tech in the labels to scan the whole truck as we left to detect misloads that weren't assigned to the truck, and using the square brick to identify what truck was passing through. They took them down a couple years back, not sure what happened.
 

Jackburton

Gone Fish'n
They're not trying to scan every single package. They don't wait till the sort is over. They're just hoping to catch flagged packages. If they scan halfway thru the sort maybe it was on the car. Whatever they scan they scan.
They are trying to scan every single package, that's the point. If they have 50,000 pieces go through and only scan 40,000, they are only at 80% efficiency. The whole idea is to scan every single package, that's the point. None of these scans is customer side visible, this is purely for audit and correct car loading.
 

ManInBrown

Well-Known Member
They are trying to scan every single package, that's the point. If they have 50,000 pieces go through and only scan 40,000, they are only at 80% efficiency. The whole idea is to scan every single package, that's the point.
They don't wait till the end of the sort. They're just hoping to scan packages that are flagged. Whatever they scan they scan. They don't hold the driver up from leaving here. And it's done discreetly so the driver doesn't know there car was scanned. Of course the loader will tell you though. That defeats the whole purpose. To scan every package would mean after the PCM I would come up and see them scanning my car
 

Jackburton

Gone Fish'n
They don't wait till the end of the sort. They're just hoping to scan packages that are flagged. Whatever they scan they scan. They don't hold the driver up from leaving here. And it's done discreetly so the driver doesn't know there car was scanned. Of course the loader will tell you though. That defeats the whole purpose. To scan every package would mean after the PCM I would come up and see them scanning my car
Not sure if you're talking about old school audit scan or truck specific scans. This new system is all about scanning every single package that gets loaded on every single truck.
 
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