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

soberups

Pees in the brown Koolaid
Don't listen to the comments of some jaded person from a test site, who does not not fully know the past, present, and future of the program.

Im also not going to listen to the comments of some tech weenie who has been drinking too much of the brown Kool Aide and believes everything that Big Brown tells him.

I hope you are correct, I really do. Thing is, I have been with the company for 26 years and I have seen a lot of new programs and ideas rolled out. The one thing that they all had in common was that, regardless of how good the idea itself might have been, UPS wound up implementing that idea half-assed and on the cheap.

You claim that an "ORION team" will be assigned to each center for 5 months to oversee and troubleshoot the installation. While that may indeed be true for the test sites, I have a hard time believing that every center nationwide will have the same level of support and resources devoted towards the implementation of the new system. Something tells me that the 5 months is going to be "enhanced" down to 5 weeks or even 5 days as a cost-cutting measure. I hope I am wrong; I dont think that I will be.
 

soberups

Pees in the brown Koolaid
7. Will ORION factor in the need for us to arrange meet points and take stops off of other drivers in the loop who have 8 hr requests or 9.5 hr grievances when it resequences our deliveries?
no, but you should have those items accounted for when dispatching the routes. if you put together a good dispatch plan, pm distaching should not exist



ROFLMAO obviously a person who has never been a driver or managed a real UPS operational center.​
 

Dragon

Package Center Manager
PM dispatching can be corrected in the AM, I think everyone knows how to fix it.....wait for it....its called putting the right number of routes in.

then you only have to deal with someone who has a break down, heavy pickups, etc, etc.

Ok I am done with the fantasy....
 

sortaisle

Livin the cardboard dream
PM dispatching can be corrected in the AM, I think everyone knows how to fix it.....wait for it....its called putting the right number of routes in.

then you only have to deal with someone who has a break down, heavy pickups, etc, etc.

Ok I am done with the fantasy....
ROFLcopters!
I've met very few Center Managers with a good grip on fantasy and reality! Kudos to you sir! I am quite the fan of having difficult tasks to try to achieve. But there's diminishing returns with setting the bar too high. It should be difficult to achieve, not impossible to achieve.
 

soberups

Pees in the brown Koolaid
ROFLcopters!
I've met very few Center Managers with a good grip on fantasy and reality! Kudos to you sir! I am quite the fan of having difficult tasks to try to achieve. But there's diminishing returns with setting the bar too high. It should be difficult to achieve, not impossible to achieve.

The problem is that todays "Center Manager" isnt even allowed to make basic operational decisions such as how many routes to dispatch. He/she is little more than a glorified clerk who rubber-stamps warning letters and reads corporate-generated PCM's. The people who actually make those decisions do so from hundreds of miles away, with no accountability whatsoever for the failure of their "plans". Its kind of like flying an aircraft via remote control; really easy to do, especially since its someone else who will go down in flames when you fail.
 
S

serenity now

Guest
was in a large apt. complex delivering and noticed a few lines down a pkg. for an adjacent complex with an entrance 2 blocks away on a different street * however i knew that on my way out i would pass about 40 feet away from #638 *
can Orion do that?

was delivering one side of a busy street and noticed a particular vehicle in the parking lot of daycare on the opposite side * customer who drives that car lives way out in the country off the hard road on the back side of a large cotton field * stopped there next and made the delivery * can Orion do that?
 

pretzel_man

Well-Known Member
was in a large apt. complex delivering and noticed a few lines down a pkg. for an adjacent complex with an entrance 2 blocks away on a different street * however i knew that on my way out i would pass about 40 feet away from #638 *
can Orion do that?

was delivering one side of a busy street and noticed a particular vehicle in the parking lot of daycare on the opposite side * customer who drives that car lives way out in the country off the hard road on the back side of a large cotton field * stopped there next and made the delivery * can Orion do that?

Probably not... It's good to know that you can do better than what ORION says.
 

cosmo1

Perhaps.
Staff member
was delivering one side of a busy street and noticed a particular vehicle in the parking lot of daycare on the opposite side * customer who drives that car lives way out in the country off the hard road on the back side of a large cotton field * stopped there next and made the delivery * can Orion do that?




Question, will Orion think​ I'm at the address on the pkg if I do this and re-arrange my EDD from there, or does it look at my actual location?
 

UpstateNYUPSer(Ret)

Well-Known Member
Probably not... It's good to know that you can do better than what ORION says.

P-man, with 35 years in I would think that you would agree that there is no substitute for area knowledge.

Yeah, Watson may have beat Ken Jennings on Jeopardy, but a computer would not know that you don't go anywhere near Momot Elementary between 1415 and 1445.
 

728ups

All Trash No Trailer
I have finally given in and I no longer worry about the 'smart' way to run the route,or if my way is more efficent. I get my air and my business stops off then follow EDD to the letter. It has added at least an hour to my day plus well over 20 miles travel. I break off to make my pick ups in compliance then go back to EDD. Who am I to argue with the dispatcher and the IE team?
It has also resulted in my stop count going down by about 15 stops a day so i wont go over nine five.
 

soberups

Pees in the brown Koolaid
that's my point; we get paid well to manage the route
so let us do it

The IE dipstick in the cubicle doesnt want you to manage the route. He want you to generate a compliance metric that will enhance his job security by making him look better on a report. If it doesnt work in the real world, that is your problem not his.
 

soberups

Pees in the brown Koolaid
I have two one lane country roads on my route that join at either end and basically form a 15 mile loop, with numerous little dead-end spur roads off of each one.

If I follow EDD (or in the future, ORION) at a certain time of day, I can wind up following a school bus for 15 miles.

Or, if I use common sense and area knowledge, I can go the opposite way on the loop and only meet that bus once, in passing.

Can ORION do that? And if I override ORION and use common sense, will someone bitch at me for not making 85%?

I think ORION may certainly have potential...if it is implemented properly and used with a measure of common sense and realistic expectations.

Unfortunately, UPS's track record when it comes to "proper implementation", "common sense" and "realistic expectations" is rather dismal.
 

Brownslave688

You want a toe? I can get you a toe.
And my point.....

If ORION comes up with a better way, do it.

If you can beat ORION do it.

That is my definition of managing your route.


orion edd pas and trace are all based on perfect case scenario. You cant beat perfect. If your too good it means their numbers must be wrong and will add stops miles or just general BS until your not perfect anymore.
 

bumped

Well-Known Member
And my point.....

If ORION comes up with a better way, do it.

If you can beat ORION do it.

Here's the problem. The packages are not loaded in stop for stop order like we were told they would be when PAS was first brought on. Many management people said even a monkey could do it. Well, bring on the monkeys. I have misloads everyday, and everyday, no matter of who loads, I get a little better than a section load. Even when we were light such as a day last week, the loaders were all off the clock early. Great, but same crappy load with misloads.


We can't even get EDD correct, so why are we moving onto something else.
 
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bumped

Well-Known Member
When a correction to the trace needs to be made are we going to hear, We have to change that in every plan.

Guess what, when it was friend'ed up, it was friend'ed up in every plan.

My trace is so bad cover drivers don't want to do it. I'm done trying to fix it.
 

Logb17

Well-Known Member
I personally don't think its all that bad. As a cover driver at has improved a lot of routes. Some routes it doesn't work at all, only because there is to much digging. For the most part it keeps the order of your regular EDD setup. On resi routes ill get 30 stops of with my 10:30 air. It sets up a whole air route for you. Looping your air and getting other stops along the way.
 
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