It seems like people who are responsible don't care anymore. Maybe it's the wages, the pressure or whatever. It looks like it's about time to replace even more humans from the equation.
But the answer is (as always) more automation. Mind, this can lead to really neat edge cases where you accidentally build a package smashing factory. But in general repeatability (machine) beats out diligence (people) every time.
You just have to, you know, pay for it. The cost benefit analysis probably strongly favors the marked box in this case.
The sheer amount of variables that this would require, without error, would be ridiculous. UPS and other places tried to make the customer do it by storage lockers, and those failed. There's nowhere near any elegant form of solution to improve on that.
Right now, my neighborhood has grouped mailboxes[1], and anything more than a semi-flat package will not fix. Small boxes that don't fit are delivered to the shared larger compartment, which is locked, and the key is then left in your mailbox. When you use the key, it does not come out of the shared compartment, so in retrieving your delivery the key is automatically returned. I don't see why this system can't be scaled up somewhat. Automated delivery to a shared compartment which can be designed to accommodate such a scenario would be significantly easier. Want direct to home delivery by a person? I'm sure the delivery companies can accommodate you with a special type of delivery[2]. Theft might be a problem, but since these are generally in neighborhoods next to houses, and setting up a camera would be simple (and undoubtedly pay for itself in some circumstances when people contend they did not get a package), I think it wouldn't be too much of a problem.
1: https://www.mailboxworks.com/images/af-12doorcbu-lrg.jpg
2: In truth, it would probably start with the automated to shared compartment delivery being a new option that's slightly cheaper. Eventually it would probably become the norm since it's cheaper.
My shipping experience is a constant fight to get them to hold the package for pickup because I'm not going to be home during their delivery hours (~9-5 Mon-Fri) and I don't want to wait four or five business days for them to make several delivery attempts before I go pick it up.
I used one in Denmark last week. I received an SMS saying delivery would be the next day, but I could reply to request delivery to the drop off point in a nearby supermarket instead of at my home. I did this.
I received another SMS with a collection code. A keypad on the set of lockers opened the lock on one of them, and I collected the package at a perfectly convenient time.
Or wait, scratch that; how about Uber for packages. Bored at work? You could be delivering packages remotely to supplement your income!
I think it's only a matter of time before large scale data gathering service providers form a good-enough model of the environment in which they operate, to the point that the core service can be completely automated.
They use "Earn on your own schedule" instead of "Bored at work?" as a slogan, though (https://www.uber.com/signup/drive/deliver/)
Smarter mailboxes where you literally address the mail to an electronic physical mailbox, which digitally signs the receipt.
It would be great if someone could disrupt the duopoly of bad service.
Probably it's just impossible to find enough good employees (for the salary they are willing to pay), and once you reach a certain scale, you will always face such issues.
God DHL is such an utter shit-show, it's amazing.
> for the salary they are willing to pay
Yeah that tends to be a big issue, there isn't any positive incentive to care, and the "production" incentives (number of packages through) generally go the other way, wasting time treating packages carefully is a good way to not meet quota and get shit-canned. And let's not kid ourselves, consumers aren't generally willing to pay for expensive careful shipping either.
I work in Packaging design and love problem solving. Any startups that need custom Packaging designed (design is usually free as value added service to get the mfg contract) feel free to PM me to discuss. I love to help/advise whether it becomes a mutually beneficial Business relationship, or a one sided help you only situation. ;)
If you want your contact details to be public you need to put them into the "about:" box in your profile.
I guess companies can in some cases track damages backwards and add these to the quotas and bottom lines.
When I was 18 I worked for a few months on the assembly line at a Motorola manufacturing plant, assembling radio communication devices. It was a shit job with minimum wage and we had to meet strict quotas, but assembly errors were also counted, (the goal was "six sigma", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Sigma).
Once defects were a priority as well, and they were tracked to a specific person (by means of a sticker on each assembly stage), people started to care.
BTW the only cool thing about it was that the company REALLY cared about improving efficiency and reducing errors, and anyone who would come up with an improvement to any process, would get a reward, that could be a lot of money in extreme cases. I suggested a very basic "hack" that saved the company $100 a month or so, and got a small gift and a certificate of excellence or some bullshit.
Anyway, the connector cables were manually soldered to them at a nearby station, and the ladies who did the soldering used to just pile the LED panels in a box, and as a result some of them would get scratches on the visible part and had to be thrown away. At the same time, the speakers I would also screw-in, came in these grid-like trays, where each speaker was placed in a small rectangular cell.
My brilliant idea was to recycle these cardboard trays and have the solderers place the finished circuits in them, so they'd never damage each other. It saved 10-20 defected panels a month IIRC. Not enough to get me bonus, but enough to get me a cheap FM radio and a certificate.
A guy who worked there at the time optimized some circuit board printing procedure and saved the company IIRC like $100K a year (or was it a month?), and got a very big bonus.
But no, first answer is always "remove people" I guess. Like you even can, no robot is going to be able to do a UPS job any time soon.
17-ish years ago I got a temp seasonal job at one of UPS's air hubs, and they paid me $8 per hour. $8 in then-money is equivalent to more than $11 in now-money. So you're saying I was better paid as a seasonal temp than people who are much higher in UPS's pecking order than that are nowadays.
Now it being part time, yeah, I believe that. Pretty much everyone in that facility was working about 30h/wk.
Surveillance - that's what supervisors are for. Really though, you have 800-1000 packages to load into 3-4 cars over 3-5 hours. When you have 20 of these bikes arrive on the conveyor belt in a 30 minute window and nowhere to put them (since it's hours from shift end and you can't put them in the delivery truck yet), they get dealt with fast and not so gently. That could easily mean a 3-4 ft drop onto concrete, and a supervisor would be unlikely to care since they know the pressure to go fast. The official policy is "hand to surface" for every package, but in reality you have to work at a pace where this is impractical - so it's ignored apart from egregious abuse of packages.
edit: as for discussion elsewhere here about proper packaging, here's FedEx guidelines/testing: http://www.fedex.com/us/services/pdf/PKG_Testing_Under150Lbs...
Some of the criteria, such as dropping the package 10x from a 30" height, might seem absurd if you haven't seen how the sausage is made. It really isn't.
https://www.google.com/search?q=ups+driver+wage
I usually see UPS drivers cited as an example of a unionized, middle-class job.
See articles 22, 40, and 41. $11 is current part-time package handler pay (preload), drivers are almost exclusively (with a few exceptions) full time employees, and max out at close to $30/hr. Locals can and do negotiate this higher, that's the national minimum. Also, a huge priority for the union is ensuring that UPS doesn't start using part time drivers instead of FT drivers.
Seasonals shouldn't make less, unless you're counting the $125 union initiation fee that everyone has to pay - a bit silly that it applies to them, probably a great money maker.
Then again, don't get me wrong, I do think that the government needs to do more wealth redistribution.
Who get told "we need an X% increase in productivity" - so they look at their metrics and come up with some idiot conclusion like "drivers just need to spend on average X seconds less per delivery...so I'm going to start measuring people by how long they're stopped making a delivery and have reviews when they are stopped too long".
Meanwhile, the delivery driver who has a route full of apartment buildings without easy truck access gets screwed.
This is rather about the workplace culture than the pay.
https://scontent-lax3-1.cdninstagram.com/t51.2885-15/e35/142...
Doesn't matter how much you pay someone if you make it clear at every point that you don't care what they think about trying to improve the job they do, then they'll adjust their enthusiasm accordingly. Or if trying to be better is used as a form of punishment i.e. "that's a good idea Barry, you can be in charge of implementing it without any change in pay or responsibilities!"
So sick of the endless chatter of this "automation utopia" here. It doesn't exist, it's not going to exist likely for hundreds of years, so lets turn the blind eye while the automaters rake in the profits and wages continue to stagnate for the next 40 years like they have the previous 40.
Believe it or not, some people want to work. Many are raised on the principle of you need to work to eat, and will continue to raise their kids in this fashion for the unforeseeable future. Call it what you want, it is just the way some people live their life and find worth. We have to stop and ask ourselves why on earth would we want to even automate all work? It always goes down some utilitarian route, and I am saddened to see that this is the only ethical framework that has room in modern, capitalistic society.
> A job automated is a person that doesn't need to work.
False. A job automated is a person that a company doesn't need a worker for. There is a difference, in that now that person doesn't get paid. Company makes more money. This will be the situation until we reach the fabled "automation utopia" where all the essentials are taken care of such as food, shelter, water, travel, medicine, law, governance, and humans are left to frolic around to and fro. Until then, there will be hundreds of years of human suffering. Let's stop this endless pursuit to automate which is driven largely by profit, and focus our attention on solving human suffering. We have better things to be doing with our time than to figure out how to replace everyone's job.