Have you heard of the Orion System, what do you know?

[Brownslave688]

45 minutes overtime.
Around 20 minutes extra overtime on bonus with the increased miles.
3 gallons gas.
20 minutes overtime for the shuttle driver waiting for me.

Cost UPS between $80 and $100 extra to deliver this parcel then needed.
All because someone didn't want a late air to show up on an air shuttle report.
Wonder how this corporation makes money sometimes.

​rates go up approx. 6% every January.

 

[40andOut]

​Just some tips for those of you not on ORION yet:

-ORION Delivery Order (ODO) will be a list of your stops in the order ORION figures is most efficient. You can toggle between ODO and Regular Delivery Order (RDO)...which is the normal EDD list you now use.


-ODO will sequence all NDA stops into the first part of your day, but it will list the non-NDA for these same stops as separate stops. USUALLY, but not always, the non-NDA will be listed as a separate stop immediately following the NDA stop of the same address. Unfortunately you will have to do a quick check of RDO NDA stops (or check your entire ODO)to make sure ODO doesn't have you coming back later in the day to deliver ground.


-The ORION guys seem to have allot of leeway on how they "classify" your route, input time commits, etc. etc.
this can drastically affect service to your customers, how much time you spend sorting/pulling boxes early off of back shelves, how many miles it projects, and what time it projects you getting done with your last stop etc.etc. ORION almost never actually projects the shortest route possible; too many variables (algorithms) that are prioritized incorrectly.


-ORION-ODO as it is currently being employed does not adjust your delivery order based on how your day is progressing...ie if you had to skip some stops to make your 10:30 commit it wont reloop those stops. The ORION guy that rode with me said that real-time re-looping based on your current GPS location, the direction your truck facing, and the remaining stops and their location is in the works.


-ORION-ODO as it is currently being employed does not adjust the order the stops are loaded in your truck. The ORION guy that rode with me said that eventually the plan is to have the trucks loaded according to ODO not RDO as is currently the case.


-ORION will project the time you will be at each stop during the day. This is helpful to view in the morning so you can show the supervisor it is projecting that you will punch in more than 9.5 hours. Unless these numbers are manipulated in the future.


-ORION will project your total miles for the day. If you follow ORION 100% it can be very accurate barring breaking off for time commits etc. etc. It can also project miles Extremely low even if following ODO 100%......many drivers have experienced this, and we suspect (with a great deal evidence) that this number is being manipulated. The projected miles on big mileage days will sometimes be 30 miles short of actual when using ODO 100%. Not sure yet if this is the ORION guy trying to look like he is going to trim the center's miles for the day or an attempt to manipulate drivers to cut miles, or to make the projected planned day look shorter. If this number can be overridden (projected miles) then I suspect that projected arrival times for stops (and the projected time for your last stop) will be manipulated in the future as well...."you only have a 9.2 plan according to ORION"

 

[soberups]

Speedy,

I've been around a long time, and I'm not sure how to manipulate the most of numbers I mentioned:

NDPPH? Cost per piece?

I guess you can manipulate SPORH and SPM, but good luck.

Pman,

We have several routes that deliver to malls or huge bulk stops that are loaded in multiple 24 foot vans. The driver empties the van out, returns to the building, and makes a second trip in a second vehicle to complete the route.

If SPORH is the flavor of the week and we are chasing a number, one of the easiest ways for management to game the system is simply to use TAW or Safety Committee employees to shuttle these vehicles out to the delivery area and drive the empty ones back. Since their time is coded out to TAW or safety, they essentially become "ghost drivers" whose time and mileage doesnt get charged to the center. They can also be used to shuttle misloads between drivers, saving those drivers the time and mileage that would have otherwise shown up on the report. I have personally had several days on TAW where I drove over 200 miles and "worked" for 10+ hours without showing up on any sort of a report.

The other variable that can have a huge effect on the metrics you mention is the manner in which misloads are accounted for. If "service" is our flavor of the week (and no TAW's are available) as a center we can rack up hundreds of miles and the equivalent of an entire paid day chasing them off. If SPORH is the flavor of the week, and responsibility for those misloads can in any way be "charged" to another part of the operation, then we will simply record them as "missed" and bring them back. This variable alone can have huge impacts on the center's numbers for the day.

 

[BMWMC]

I think I'll just ignore the Orion (cow bell) and just do the job as I've been doing it. I know my route, customers, and how to work the load. I don't need some machine second guessing every decision or mistake I make. I've got metro's for that.

 

[Griff]

From the route you mention, I would agree. But, its not correct that the concept is flawed??? Over 3,000 drivers are using ORION today, and they have shaved off a significant amount of miles. I truly believe what you say about your route, your center. That doesn't mean that the entire company is the same. I've been on an ORION ride. I've seen it. Flawed? Sure. We are all flawed. Conceptually wrong. No. At least not for the 3,000 drivers as a whole.

I used to do 75-78 miles doing it my way. Anywhere from 85-95 with ORION because I follow it 95%+ everyday.

Big thanks to all you folks in Atlanta. I can always count on the brain trust to pad my bankroll with new ideas to justify their existence.

 

[soberups]

The question still remains however. 3,000 drivers are using the system with the flaws you mention. Significant time and miles are being saved....

Pman, When you say that the 3,000 drivers who are on ORION are saving time and miles...I believe you.

What I dont believe...is that those savings have anything to do with whether or not the drivers happen to be following ORION to a certain percentage.

Here is what I mean. ORION is being implemented in my center as we speak. A huge part of the implementation process has been correcting the many flaws in our existing PAS/EDD system. The implementation team has been "cleaning up" problems in our loops and unit boundaries that have been creating chronic dispatch issues in our center for several years now. I was originally told that my area would not be re-looped, but that decision has been reversed and the implementation team is hard at work fixing it right now so that I can go live on ORION by fall. Pickup routes are being adjusted and re-assigned, and systematic attention is being given to reducing misloads by improving preload job setup and making adjustments to assignments where needed. Parking positions are also being adjusted, with the goal being to keep adjacent routes parked next to one another rather than on completely different belts as has frequently been the case. This alone will cause a huge decrease in the amount of time and miles that we waste running off misloads, since they will usually be from an adacent route instead of one that delivers to a town 40 miles away.

My point to all of this....is that it is false logic for you to claim that ORION is saving time and miles for 3000 drivers by giving those drivers stop-for-stop delivery instructions to follow based upon GPS coordinates. The savings in time and miles are the result of the improvements that are being made and the problems that are being corrected as part of the implementation process itself.

An accurate way to determine the real effectiveness of ORION...would be to implement it at a center and have the drivers follow it at 85% or better for one week. Then on the following week....instruct those same drivers to turn ORION off and rely instead on area knowledge to determine the optimum delivery order. All other factors (volume, weather, staffing etc.) being equal, I'd bet every dollar I have that the drivers would make better and more cost-effective decisions that ORION would ever be capable of. Something tells me that this sort of open-minded, apples-to-apples comparison of ORION versus area knowledge has never and will never be done by the company; the ugly truth would be that the drivers will make better decisions than ORION 99% of the time and this would force UPS to be honest about what a waste of money the ORION system itself actually is.

 

[BMWMC]

Pman, When you say that the 3,000 drivers who are on ORION are saving time and miles...I believe you.

What I dont believe...is that those savings have anything to do with whether or not the drivers happen to be following ORION to a certain percentage.

Here is what I mean. ORION is being implemented in my center as we speak. A huge part of the implementation process has been correcting the many flaws in our existing PAS/EDD system. The implementation team has been "cleaning up" problems in our loops and unit boundaries that have been creating chronic dispatch issues in our center for several years now. I was originally told that my area would not be re-looped, but that decision has been reversed and the implementation team is hard at work fixing it right now so that I can go live on ORION by fall. Pickup routes are being adjusted and re-assigned, and systematic attention is being given to reducing misloads by improving preload job setup and making adjustments to assignments where needed. Parking positions are also being adjusted, with the goal being to keep adjacent routes parked next to one another rather than on completely different belts as has frequently been the case. This alone will cause a huge decrease in the amount of time and miles that we waste running off misloads, since they will usually be from an adacent route instead of one that delivers to a town 40 miles away.

My point to all of this....is that it is false logic for you to claim that ORION is saving time and miles for 3000 drivers by giving those drivers stop-for-stop delivery instructions to follow based upon GPS coordinates. The savings in time and miles are the result of the improvements that are being made and the problems that are being corrected as part of the implementation process itself.

An accurate way to determine the real effectiveness of ORION...would be to implement it at a center and have the drivers follow it at 85% or better for one week. Then on the following week....instruct those same drivers to turn ORION off and rely instead on area knowledge to determine the optimum delivery order. All other factors (volume, weather, staffing etc.) being equal, I'd bet every dollar I have that the drivers would make better and more cost-effective decisions that ORION would ever be capable of. Something tells me that this sort of open-minded, apples-to-apples comparison of ORION versus area knowledge has never and will never be done by the company; the ugly truth would be that the drivers will make better decisions than ORION 99% of the time and this would force UPS to be honest about what a waste of money the ORION system itself actually is.

Spot on. The correction of PAS/EDD is where the new money is being found. They have so thoroughly screwed up those two system that its really just become back round music. Which goes to the point of the real effectiveness of this technology. Sure its better in many ways but not useful in others. Both PAS/EDD would be, and are now, becoming more effective is when the mangling from management is undone. By the mangling was done because the technology doesn't fit the real word and production changes.

I can think of so many ad-hock changes I get on the job that EDD can never see. People that I notice at stores or the PO that I can give a package to instead of driving there. Short cuts that take me there quicker. Customers I call or call me to change or adjust PU or DEL. If UPS wants robots then there the big loser. Problem I see is they'll want it both ways. The way I can get it done faster and Orion's way. Get us hopping from one foot to the other and catching us in the switches. More ways to play gottcha.

 

[East coast navy]

I beat Orion by 3 to 5 miles a day on a town route. I have a lot of one way streets that it can't calculate right. It sometimes will make me go down the wrong way. So I ask the Orion guys and they are like that can't be. I'm like of course it can, that's ups. The brain train. I can't wait when the are like you need to follow Orion 100%. I'll be 10 miles over at least. lol I love this place!!

 

[bumped]

Pman,

We have several routes that deliver to malls or huge bulk stops that are loaded in multiple 24 foot vans. The driver empties the van out, returns to the building, and makes a second trip in a second vehicle to complete the route.

If SPORH is the flavor of the week and we are chasing a number, one of the easiest ways for management to game the system is simply to use TAW or Safety Committee employees to shuttle these vehicles out to the delivery area and drive the empty ones back. Since their time is coded out to TAW or safety, they essentially become "ghost drivers" whose time and mileage doesnt get charged to the center. They can also be used to shuttle misloads between drivers, saving those drivers the time and mileage that would have otherwise shown up on the report. I have personally had several days on TAW where I drove over 200 miles and "worked" for 10+ hours without showing up on any sort of a report.

The other variable that can have a huge effect on the metrics you mention is the manner in which misloads are accounted for. If "service" is our flavor of the week (and no TAW's are available) as a center we can rack up hundreds of miles and the equivalent of an entire paid day chasing them off. If SPORH is the flavor of the week, and responsibility for those misloads can in any way be "charged" to another part of the operation, then we will simply record them as "missed" and bring them back. This variable alone can have huge impacts on the center's numbers for the day.

If your on TAW, you should not be shuttling cars or packages. You should not be doing work that a union member by rights should be doing. I was also on TAW and that was forbidden. We actually have a list of what one can do on TAW. You can, for instance, shuttle out a DIAD. I know the time goes by much faster shuttling the packages/cars than sitting in a room for 8 plus hours, but you must contact your BA if this is happening.

 

[40andOut]

In addition to cleaning up EDD, the mileage gains attributed to ORION come from management no longer honoring delivery commit times. You see, ORION has to cut miles because the guys at the top say it will. So abandoning commitments to our long term customers will not get in the way. Service, safety (injuries and accidents), and damages are not important because ORION is someone's favorite brainchild.

 

[UpstateNYUPSer(Ret)]

If your on TAW, you should not be shuttling cars or packages. You should not be doing work that a union member by rights should be doing. I was also on TAW and that was forbidden. We actually have a list of what one can do on TAW. You can, for instance, shuttle out a DIAD. I know the time goes by much faster shuttling the packages/cars than sitting in a room for 8 plus hours, but you must contact your BA if this is happening.

I was on light duty for two weeks and spent the time driving my route while a helper delivered. There is nothing wrong with union members on light duty shuttling DIADs, packages, package cars and/or misloads as long as they are working within their restrictions. That was my problem---I kept wanting to work and the helper kept telling me no. Longest two weeks of my life but much better than spending 8 hours each day sitting in the office.

 

[soberups]

I was on light duty for two weeks and spent the time driving my route while a helper delivered. There is nothing wrong with union members on light duty shuttling DIADs, packages, package cars and/or misloads as long as they are working within their restrictions. That was my problem---I kept wanting to work and the helper kept telling me no. Longest two weeks of my life but much better than spending 8 hours each day sitting in the office.

I have done the same thing; however, unless it is Peak Season that "helper" is making a guranteed 8 hours at full driver pay and any laid-off FT drivers are entitled to that work before it can be given to a PT employee.

 

[grgrcr88]

I had the Orion implementation ride Tuesday. What a load of crap. I have a four lane hi-way running thru the center of the city i deliver and 90% of the businesses are on that road. Orion has me going back and forth across the road all day long. Odd, Even , Odd , Even... even downtown where there is no parking except on the street. Am i supposed to pull across 4 lanes of traffic and park facing the wrong way or pull a two wheeler across those 4 lanes? It has no idea which stops are businesses and which are residential or doesn't care!! Has me running rural resi's in the morning and business stops last. I have not followed it at all since the initial ride. The sup that rode with me didn't know what to do!! I had to give away 30 stops and miles were up by 15!! So far everyone that has it in our center has said the same things! The company is spending more money on wages and fuel in idle time than they could possibly ever save in miles reduced!! Typical UPS, they have such tunnel vision they never look at the actual affects only what they want to see. I'll tell you this, we will lose a lot of customers due to piss poor service in a very short period of time if this system is allowed to take over the entire company!!

 

[40andOut]

It really is a shame. For decades UPS had some of it's best and brightest managers, who really understood delivery, loop these routes. All of that accumulated area and logistic knowledge and expertise is going to be lost. You don't loop a retail area that opens after 10 AM to be delivered first. You don't put a driver on top of a school when it lets out. You don't loop one way streets the wrong direction. You loop busy retail 4 lane roads even-odd, not just high to low. You deliver an important customer or bulk stop early, even when it means you travel an extra 1/4 mile etc. etc. Why do they not value decades of experience by both managers and drivers alike?


I think the robo-delivery truck idea is a bit far fetched, but perhaps ORION is the first step...Take all the variation that comes with human thought out of the equation. ORION has figured out a short cut that I have been using for a particular stop (I have been accessing it from a different street). It now sequences the stop into the other street. This shortcut is not available year-round, however. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing! I did not know that ORION had the ability to learn...Artificial Intelligence program, perhaps?. If so, I will have to consider how much I will let ORION know about my area - Stop doing things that only a driver with an intimate area knowledge knows about. When I gave up a route I had done for over a decade, I wrote out all the useful things I knew about the route for the new route driver. It took me over 6 hours to compile and I filled 8 pages. Needless to say, the new route driver was very appreciative. I will not do the same for a machine, or scab that replaces me.

 

[What'dyabringmetoday???]

I had the Orion implementation ride Tuesday. What a load of crap. I have a four lane hi-way running thru the center of the city i deliver and 90% of the businesses are on that road. Orion has me going back and forth across the road all day long. Odd, Even , Odd , Even... even downtown where there is no parking except on the street. Am i supposed to pull across 4 lanes of traffic and park facing the wrong way or pull a two wheeler across those 4 lanes? It has no idea which stops are businesses and which are residential or doesn't care!! Has me running rural resi's in the morning and business stops last. I have not followed it at all since the initial ride. The sup that rode with me didn't know what to do!! I had to give away 30 stops and miles were up by 15!! So far everyone that has it in our center has said the same things! The company is spending more money on wages and fuel in idle time than they could possibly ever save in miles reduced!! Typical UPS, they have such tunnel vision they never look at the actual affects only what they want to see. I'll tell you this, we will lose a lot of customers due to piss poor service in a very short period of time if this system is allowed to take over the entire company!!

It works for 3,000 drivers.
​

 

[cosmo1]

......Stop doing things that only a driver with an intimate area knowledge knows about.....

​Too late. They've already gone back through your delivery records and have seen and used those shortcuts before you even get the ride.

 

[SignificantOwner]

I had the Orion implementation ride Tuesday. What a load of crap. I have a four lane hi-way running thru the center of the city i deliver and 90% of the businesses are on that road. Orion has me going back and forth across the road all day long. Odd, Even , Odd , Even... even downtown where there is no parking except on the street. Am i supposed to pull across 4 lanes of traffic and park facing the wrong way or pull a two wheeler across those 4 lanes? It has no idea which stops are businesses and which are residential or doesn't care!! Has me running rural resi's in the morning and business stops last. I have not followed it at all since the initial ride. The sup that rode with me didn't know what to do!! I had to give away 30 stops and miles were up by 15!! So far everyone that has it in our center has said the same things! The company is spending more money on wages and fuel in idle time than they could possibly ever save in miles reduced!! Typical UPS, they have such tunnel vision they never look at the actual affects only what they want to see. I'll tell you this, we will lose a lot of customers due to piss poor service in a very short period of time if this system is allowed to take over the entire company!!

​I was trained on ORION recently and all these issues CAN be corrected (according to the training) by trained personnel given enough time.

 

[serenity now]

​I was trained on ORION recently and all these issues CAN be corrected (according to the training) by trained personnel given enough time.

I see two big problems then.

 

[UpstateNYUPSer(Ret)]

​I was trained on ORION recently and all these issues CAN be corrected (according to the training) by trained personnel given enough time.

Do you find any benefits with the system?

 

[pretzel_man]

I had the Orion implementation ride Tuesday. What a load of crap. I have a four lane hi-way running thru the center of the city i deliver and 90% of the businesses are on that road. Orion has me going back and forth across the road all day long. Odd, Even , Odd , Even... even downtown where there is no parking except on the street. Am i supposed to pull across 4 lanes of traffic and park facing the wrong way or pull a two wheeler across those 4 lanes? It has no idea which stops are businesses and which are residential or doesn't care!! Has me running rural resi's in the morning and business stops last. I have not followed it at all since the initial ride. The sup that rode with me didn't know what to do!! I had to give away 30 stops and miles were up by 15!! So far everyone that has it in our center has said the same things! The company is spending more money on wages and fuel in idle time than they could possibly ever save in miles reduced!! Typical UPS, they have such tunnel vision they never look at the actual affects only what they want to see. I'll tell you this, we will lose a lot of customers due to piss poor service in a very short period of time if this system is allowed to take over the entire company!!

Go tell them to use cells and geo areas. That is the way to correct that.

If they don't put in the cells and geo areas, it won't work. See what they say about that.