Online shopping seems like a straightforward process: hunt down the
perfect item, trudge through the checkout pipeline and await a package's
inevitable arrival. The trip between a warehouse and your doorstep,
however, involves meticulous organization on a massive scale. In order
to pull off such a feat,
United Parcel Service
(UPS) relies on Worldport in Louisville, Ky.: a 5.2 million-square-foot
processing facility that's capable of sorting up to 416,000 packages an
hour. Within Worldport, 70 aircraft docks and 155 miles of conveyor
belts await the arrival of packages from over 220 countries and
territories. So, what happens when UPS gets ahold of those parcels
destined for air delivery? The folks clad in brown took us inside their
largest sorting hub to find out.
This video first appeared on Episode 39 of the Engadget Show
UPS trucks are the foot soldiers and the most familiar presence of the
outfit, but the real powerhouse in the operation is the firm's aircraft
fleet. In total, UPS owns 230 jets ranging in size from Boeing 757s to
747-400s, some of which have ferried everything from a whale shark to an
iceberg chunk. The aircraft deliver packages around the globe, but make
frequent pit stops at Worldport, where one of them lands roughly each
minute during peak operating hours. The facility has a 7.2-mile
perimeter and is the largest of UPS' 12 sorting hubs. Though the complex
is adjoined to Louisville International Airport and shares its two
runways, its size overshadows the passenger terminal. At Worldport
alone, more than 2.3 million gallons of fuel are guzzled down by
airplanes roughly every three days.
So, why Louisville? Simply put: good weather and short travel times.
The Derby City has generally temperate weather and is about a two-hour
flight from 75 percent of the US population, and a four-hour flight away
from 95 percent of other folks in the nation -- key factors to ensure
consistent and speedy deliveries. The surrounding area has become a
prime spot for a bevy of companies to set up their own distribution
facilities thanks to UPS' presence. Zappos and others have set up camp
nearby so they can hand off their goods to the shipping titan quickly
and ensure they arrive at their destinations as soon as possible. Nikon
and Sprint have even partnered with UPS to handle a good chunk of their
shipping duties. For example, The Now Network doesn't lift a proverbial
finger when a phone is ordered -- UPS takes care of plucking the right
handset from its inventory and shipping it off to a customer.
Work at Worldport is divided into two "sorts," a daytime and nighttime
window where packages are unloaded from arriving planes, rerouted to
their next ride and sent off again. Two-thirds of the work is done on
the latter shift, between 10 PM and 2 AM. However, preparations begin
well before aircraft even touch down. At the company's operations
center, employees keep constant tabs on coordinating operations across
the globe, including everything from world events to weather. UPS even
keeps a staff of meteorologists on hand to monitor potential weather
hazards -- snow and fog being chief among them in the winter -- and to
prognosticate what could foul up operations, while helping the team
adjust accordingly. If the weather, mechanical troubles or other mishaps
put an aircraft out of commission, the firm often has roughly a dozen
"hot" planes in different locales that are ready to take up the mantle.
Roughly 2,000 packages were processed on the very first night the site
commenced operations in September 1982. Today, 2,000 packages are
processed
every 17 seconds. Though some aircraft are
serviced out on the tarmac, the majority pull right up to the walls of
the sprawling complex. Once sidled up to the building, a crew uses a
scissor lift to unload giant enclosures made of Lexan and aluminum,
dubbed Universal Load Devices (ULDs), which can weigh up to two tons
each. Hundreds of thousands of wheels and ball bearings embedded into
the floor of the facility, the lift and even the airplanes make pulling
the hefty containers possible for between one and four mortal humans.
UPS estimates that Worldport is riddled with approximately 1.2 million
wheels and bearings.
As containers are unloaded, they find themselves at the first step in
the sort. A worker at one of 325 unloading nodes opens up the ULD and
places packages on one of three conveyor belts: one for small packages,
one for larger parcels and another for irregularly sized ones. Hardware
above the belt scans the "smart" label ubiquitous on the shipping
giant's parcels shortly thereafter. Once a package and its destination
are identified, the Worldport system routes it to the appropriate place,
all while keeping track of where each item is at all times on the
33,245 conveyors and 2.6 miles of tilt-tray sorters. Since the system
has a 20 percent redundancy, packages are dynamically rerouted to the
right loading area when part of the building's conveyor intestines fail.
If the camera system can't read a label for one reason or another, an
image of it arrives at Telecode -- a room lined with desktop stations
and employees keeping watchful eyes on screens. As soon as a snapshot
appears, workers have 10 seconds to identify the ZIP code so that the
parcel finds its way to the appropriate loading area. If neither the
scanner nor the Telecode department can appropriately identify the
offending label, the package winds its way through the system to be
inspected by hand. Just how often is there a kink in the works? UPS
prides itself with a 99.9994 percent accuracy rate, but even still, they
say that accounts for 15,000 packages that need to be nudged in the
right direction for each million. When all goes well, the company likes
to say parcels are only touched twice by human hands: upon unloading and
loading into ULDs.
Packages eventually file down a chute and into another shipping
container, which is weighed to make sure the outbound plane is properly
balanced. When rolled into position inside an aircraft, containers lock
into place to avoid moving about in flight. UPS crams up to 39 ULDs in
their largest-capacity planes, Boeing's 747-400 and the MD-11. The
entire sorting process, from unloading to reloading, takes about 45
minutes when all is said and done.
During the holidays, UPS adjusts to the influx of packages
and it has a team of 20 number-crunchers to calculate what it'll take to
handle the increased demand. Typically, that means hiring an additional
700 to 1,000 workers, leasing more aircraft and 475 extra daily flights
at Worldport alone during the busy season between Thanksgiving and
Christmas. The company handles 1.6 million packages at the complex in a
typical day, but on December 22, 2011 -- the firm's busiest day that
year -- it routed 3.6 million to their destination. On its peak day in
2011, UPS delivered more than 27 million packages in total. And 2012? It
was projected to be even more hectic. UPS isn't ready to divulge exact
numbers just yet, but it expected to handle 69 million online package
tracking requests in a single day, compared to its 2011 record of 57
million.
From: http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/03/inside-ups-worldport-sorting-hub/#continued
