Tom H. C. Anderson - Next Gen Market Research™

While We Sleep Brown Goes to Work

It’s about 2:50 in the morning and I just got back from a special VIP Tour of the UPS Worldport in Louisville, Kentucky. Not tired for some reason so thought I’d do a quick post.

Wow! First the interviews with Eli Goldratt a couple of moths ago, and now a tour like this, almost has me missing my engineering days a little (my initial undergrad major).

Unfortunately most of the tour, especially the most impressive areas, were also high security areas. However, there was a low security area or two where I was allowed to snap a few shots of the planes etc. Will post the better ones once I get them off my camera. Just posting a quick shot of a UPS flight control air traffic visualization from my iPhone above (Interestingly, UPS also has a full team of their own meteorologists predicting whether conditions wherever their planes are flying).

Pictures are really the best way to understand the scale and efficacy of UPS operations here. That said, try to imagine a 2 Billion dollar building representing an area 90 football large. As the Louisville airport closes down for the night at around 11:00pm UPS planes start picking up the pace with one aircraft landing every 90 seconds between1:30 and 2:00 in the morning.

At the same time, picture six thousand employees at this one facility carefully sorting thousands of packages per hour, most of whom are college students. UPS, other than providing pay and full health benefits to these students who work about 15-20 hours per week, also provide full tuition. Obviously this has been very successful in decreasing turnover.

Very impressive tour. Big thanks to Chris, UPS and The Conference Board!

@TomHCAnderson