ORION and the upcoming peak...

[1989]

orion is great at skipping stops on a 70mph highway in the morning. And trying to find them in the dark an your way in.

 

[1989]

It is borderline unhealthy at this point.

It will become deadly. But ups will bury the facts of the cause.

 

[soberups]

...I am more than a little amused at the Management types defending it,they need to come run a bricked out car loaded RDO,with ODO and have zero area knowledge then report back on freaking great this program is

When management has to run a route like that they go in the office and turn ODO off before leaving.

 

[soberups]

Remember a few years ago when Telematics got installed?
You would show up on a report and get lectured for excessive idle time at stoplights or waiting to make left turns.
You would show up on a report and get lectured for having the BH door open for over 18 seconds and spending too much time sorting in the package compartment.
You would show up on a report and get lectured for having too many backs.
And now...the company has spent a billion dollars on a system that is intentionally designed to force us to idle while waiting at lights and to make left turns, to force us to spend minutes at time in the in the package compartment crawling over bulk stops to search for random packages, and to force us to perform a ridiculous number of backs.
You cant make this stuff up....

 

[1989]

Remember a few years ago when Telematics got installed?
You would show up on a report and get lectured for excessive idle time at stoplights or waiting to make left turns.
You would show up on a report and get lectured for having the BH door open for over 18 seconds and spending too much time sorting in the package compartment.
You would show up on a report and get lectured for having too many backs.
And now...the company has spent a billion dollars on a system that is intentionally designed to force us to idle while waiting at lights and to make left turns, to force us to spend minutes at time in the in the package compartment crawling over bulk stops to search for random packages, and to force us to perform a ridiculous number of backs.
You cant make this stuff up....

On Thursday, after doing my pretrip, I spent 5 minutes looking for my first stop 6499. Couldn’t find it, I’m glad I didn’t go out of my way to drive to the stop first. When I got there later I actually had two stops in that block. Took 90 seconds to deliver them both.

 

[soberups]

As long as you’re making it look like it works

What incentive do the folks that make these type of decision’s have to change it

I go in the office every morning and turn it back to RDO.
My compliance is probably less that 30% and I still beat the miles.
So I am proving that it doesn’t work.

 

[Overpaid Union Thug]

On Thursday, after doing my pretrip, I spent 5 minutes looking for my first stop 6499. Couldn’t find it, I’m glad I didn’t go out of my way to drive to the stop first. When I got there later I actually had two stops in that block. Took 90 seconds to deliver them both.

Our methods, pre Orion anyway, actually mention locating a package for our next stop before we actually go there. I had gotten into the habit of doing that years ago and it was saving me a lot of trouble. But ORION has more than made up for that.

Now I am trying to locate my next stop that is buried somewhere behind the 7000 or 8000 section. And it is super cool when the dispatcher is lazier than normal and dispatches entire streets with the same sequence number. How long I spend digging for stops depends on my mood. Once I find packages I cannot find the first time around I just toss them in the back of the truck and let them accumulate and basically run the route again at the end of the night.

 

[Overpaid Union Thug]

IE doesn't design equipment, write programs like ORION, or request the development of either

we just measure and train to use whatever the developers give us in the best way possible

hope that helps

Well, seeing it put into words that way, along with seeing how most everything else is put in place, kind of makes one wonder why the hell we have an IE Department in the first place? LOL.

 

[1989]

Our methods, pre Orion anyway, actually mention locating a package for our next stop before we actually go there. I had gotten into the habit of doing that years ago and it was saving me a lot of trouble. But ORION has more than made up for that.

Now I am trying to locate my next stop that is buried somewhere behind the 7000 or 8000 section. And it is super cool when the dispatcher is lazier than normal and dispatches entire streets with the same sequence number. How long I spend digging for stops depends on my mood. Once I find packages I cannot find the first time around I just toss them in the back of the truck and let them accumulate and basically run the route again at the end of the night.

Before Orion I never needed to look for my first stop. At that first stop I find the next 4-5 and are all nearby. If I’m not getting rid of all stops as I go, I am failing.

 

[1989]

Well, seeing it put into words that way, along with seeing how most everything else is put in place, kind of makes one wonder why the hell we have an IE Department in the first place? LOL.

Funny thing is, in 29 years, I have never heard anything good about IE. Even from management that come from IE to operations.

 

[soberups]

imagine caring about a computer program at your job this much

I have never been an Industrial Engineer.
I have no training in your field.
So imagine if I came up with a bright idea about how to do your job, and was given the authority and the funds to implement it.
Imagine coming in to work and finding that I replaced your computer with one that uses a completely different operating system, that I completely repositioned the keys on your keyboard, and that I hung your monitor upside down from the ceiling.
Imagine that I opened up all your filing cabinets and re-filed all your documents so that instead of being in alphabetical order they were sequenced from the oldest to the newest.
Imagine that I took your chair away and replaced it with a crooked stool that had a wheel on one leg.
Imagine that I took your calculator away and replaced it with one that uses Roman numerals.
And imagine that I had the unmitigated gall to tell you that you had been doing your job all wrong for the last 31 years, that your knowledge and experience and input were now completely irrelevant, and that you needed to embrace my new system and utilize the new tools that I had given you despite the fact that they were complete and utter garbage that made your job impossible to perform. And, to top it off, imagine that I told you that if you used my new system and it failed to work, it would still be your fault and you would still be subject to discipline.
If you can imagine those things...you can at least begin to comprehend what it is like to be a UPS driver under ORION.

 

[Two Tokes]

There is a 250-unit housing development in my loop that was an empty field when I started delivering there.
It has only one entrance and exit.
Once the streets had been put in and the number grid established, I sat down (on the clock) and wrote a detailed trace for the entire development that would, by using the cul-de-sacs and loop streets, allow the driver to deliver to every single address in the development without having to back once.
My trace was installed into PDS, and one time I actually went over two years without ever putting the car into reverse when I delivered there.
I was kind of proud of that accomplishment. That is called walking the walk when it comes to safety.
Then ORION came along, threw that trace in the garbage, and replaced it with an idiotic cluster-coitus that takes away the safety of a set routine, that has the driver running it a different way every day, and that has him backing multiple times in a neighborhood full of children. All for a theoretical savings in distance that would be measured in tens of feet.
So yes, ORION is unsafe. Any system that intentionally destroys the driver’s established routine and that forces the driver to unnecessarily back is, by definition, unsafe.

All that and mainly why I hate ORION is that it wants you to deliver stops by crossing the street
How safe is that?
I Never have run that POS and never will
Just for the record we have had this BS for 5 years now and I have not heard anything from anyone about Orion trace in 4 years

 

[gman042]

On Thursday, after doing my pretrip, I spent 5 minutes looking for my first stop 6499. Couldn’t find it, I’m glad I didn’t go out of my way to drive to the stop first. When I got there later I actually had two stops in that block. Took 90 seconds to deliver them both.

If it is suggested that I search for packages, I do not.

I start my trace the same way everyday with the same business stop at nearly the same time.

I run my route the exact same way everyday with the exception of next day air runs.

I was trained old school and there is nothing wrong with that.

 

[1989]

If it is suggested that I search for packages, I do not.

I start my trace the same way everyday with the same business stop at nearly the same time.

I run my route the exact same way everyday with the exception of next day air runs.

I was trained old school and there is nothing wrong with that.

I usually start routes on shelf 1. I have always tried to run ground with my air. Now that is difficult to do because they are often separated in the board. But I also do a different route everyday.

 

[soberups]

I have yet to encounter a single driver...at my building, at a union meeting, on Brown Cafe, or on the UPS Teamsters FB page...that believes that ORION is anything other that pure garbage.
Even the on car supervisors know that it is crap, but they will only admit it in hushed tones and after looking around nervously to make sure no one is listening.
The only people who are still drinking the ORION Kool Aid....are people who will never actually have to use ORION on a delivery route themselves.
ORION is a great concept...from behind a desk.
It looks like an amazing solution...on a computer monitor.
But it fails miserably in the real world where the packages actually get delivered.

 

[rod]

Yes but I am only 51, my wife has health issues, and I am a cancer survivor. We need the benefits.

Do you ever get tired of explaining why you’re still working? I know I pestered you about it a few times.

 

[Netsua 3:16]

I don't think Orion was an investment made for short term return. They are committed to this technology. They will upgrade and upgrade until it becomes something we can work with. Had they known it would be this faulty at launch, they probably would have waited but were balls deep now.

 

[soberups]

I don't think Orion was an investment made for short term return. They are committed to this technology. They will upgrade and upgrade until it becomes something we can work with. Had they known it would be this faulty at launch, they probably would have waited but were balls deep now.

I am afraid you are right.
They will keep beating their head against the wall until they finally figure out that it’s not the wall that is bleeding.

 

[rod]

I am afraid you are right.
They will keep beating their head against the wall until they finally figure out that it’s not the wall that is bleeding.

I know absolutely nothing about Orion but I don’t think anything can be built or programmed to take the place of a human brain when it comes to setting up a route. There are just too many variables that have to be factored in and they all change daily. I’m sure glad I never had to deal with it—-I’m afraid someone would have died.

 

[JL 0513]

The biggest mystery to me about the programming of Orion is that it wasn't programmed to distinguish from left and right we were told. This is mind boggling because it's actually one of the easiest lines of code they could have written for this program. It constantly has you deliver to or turn left even when it has you coming back when it's then on your right.