United Parcel Services (UPS) is the world’s largest package delivery company that began in the United States of America in the year 1907. It was founded by a 19 year old boy named James E Jim Casey with a close friend known as Claude Ryan (Niemann, 2007). The company that just began with two bicycles, one phone, a tiny office in the basement of a saloon and borrowed money of $100 has greatly grown to its present level of global recognition. This paper intends to discuss, in details, how the company distributes its product, how the services are allocated and passed to customers, how it keeps the stock and monitors the use of its services.
Distribution of Products and Services at United Parcel Service (UPS). The United Parcel Service (UPS) is an American messenger service provider that began by distributing and delivering packages, notes, baggage and trays of food from restaurants. The company was mostly delivering its services on foot, bicycles or trolley cars for longer distances (Plunkett, 2009).
In 1913 the company moved a step further and began using motorcycles for some deliveries. The company’s name changed to Merchants’ Parcel Delivery in 1915 where it was using around four autos, five motorcycles and 20 foot messengers (Plunkett, 2009). In 1918 UPS began distributing packages using delivery cars and trucks. As a result, the company expanded beyond where it began (Seattle) to other places in the United States.
James Carsey resigned in 1960s from being the director of UPS. It is worth noting that since then, the company has been making serious progress on how it distributes its services to customers. In 1980s, UPS entered the international shipping market where it began distributing its services using ships. Furthermore, it established operations in the Eastern and Western Europe, Middle East, Africa and Pacific Rim (Plunkett, 2009).
Today UPS has air services that enable to cater for the increasing market competition. The company also entered a new era with an international air package and document service, connecting the U.S and other major six European nations (Daft, 2010). With all these advancements, UPS is still utilizing the cars, trucks, motorcycles and ships for its delivery throughout the world.
Service Allocation and Passage to Customers at United Parcel Service (UPS). The main mission of UPS business is timely and definite delivery of packages and documents throughout the world. The company’s operation focuses on three main areas. These include U.S Domestic Package, International Package and Supply Chain and Freight operations (Daft, 2010).
U.S Domestic Package Operations include constant delivery of letters, documents and packages. This service is mainly done in most of the towns in U.S. The International Package on the other hand focuses on delivering the UPS services and products throughout the world. This is done through the use of ships and air (Niemann, 2007). Besides the two types of product allocation operations, UPS also operates in the form of Supply Chain and Freight (UPS-Supply Chain Supply). The UPS- SCS mostly deals with the forwarding and contract logistics operations. UPS Freight, which is also known as Less Than- Truckload (LTL), deals with transporting the customer products in trucks that travels overnight (Niemann, 2007). The UPS- SCS is responsible for the supply chain design, execution, management, forwarding and freight, customs brokerage, mail and consulting services to almost 175 countries (Plunkett, 2009).
The last customer service allocation is the UPS store franchises. This deals with one to one consumer services. It involves offering small businesses and consumers services in one particular location (Daft, 2010). This services includes mailbox services, postal services, printing, packaging and domestic and international shipping. It also offers business services to small- office or home office marketing. The UPS store franchise also offers its products and services in learning institutions, military bases, convention centers and hotels (Daft, 2010).
Stocking and Monitoring of Service Utilization at UPS. The United Parcels Services (UPS), as a logistic service provider, experiences high competition from other service providers such as Federal Express (FedEx). Therefore, there is a high need for UPS to attract, retain and keep trust with its customers. The company has managed this through engaging in the physical delivery of mails, electronic commerce and other new technologies that upholds the B2C (business- to- customer) and B2B (business- to- business) strategies (Plunkett, 2009).
The new slogan of UPS in 1980s “reliability and affordability” has made UPS company invest much in information technology (IT). This has led to the introduction of fleet of airplanes, technological improvement in infrastructure among others. Due to the new technological advancement, massive number of employees and customers were trained on the business implications of technology and also the activities of the Enterprise Fund (SEF) (Niemann, 2007).
Many activities of UPS can be linked to its adoption of e- commerce. This has improved the accessibility to its services. Customers have easy access to other information regarding the company through the online tools such as internet (Draft, 2010). The management of the company has ensured the mail boxes are integrated in their own stores. Through adoption of technology, UPS has managed to reduce customer mobility by setting UPS shipping centers in the Office Deport locations. UPS is also providing services that all along has been traditionally provided by the public entities. The management is dedicated to helping their customers manage their supply chains well (Plunkett, 2009).
In conclusion, UPS management has dedicated their time, energy and even the million dollars of the company to improve products and services in order to satisfy customers need. Therefore, all logistic service providers at UPS aim at providing or distributing services and goods to satisfy the customers’ needs.