Ups Competitive Advantage
UPS’S Competitive Advantage
Instructor Cretson Dalmadge
MIS 3360-W1
February 3, 2010
In order for an organization to be more competitive, it’s imperative for them to stay abreast of the latest technology. “The early 1990’s marked the start of another era of change at UPS (United Parcel Service of America inc, 1994).” Technological Change was necessary to accommodate the increased volume of packages. This paper will explore the challenges faced by the business along with the network functionalities and the benefits that the changes in technology contributed. Organizations are constantly striving to gain a competitive advantage. UPS faced adversity during the transition from manual operations to electronic transmissions. The challenges they faced were finding a company to assist them in implementing the wireless technology that was necessary to support the cellular service need to operate the DIAD system. “In the 1980 UPS purchased two leading technological companies to develop and to test specialized packaged tracking equipment (Reuters, 2010).” As a result of the acquisitions UPS was able to create a partnership with four major telecommunications firms to develop the system required to implement the DIAD board. The DIAD board “Delivery Information Acquisition Device (Reuters, 2010),” revolutionized the way UPS received package delivery information. The DIAD board is a multi-purpose hand held device used by UPS drivers. This device that is carried by each ups drivers functions as a time clock, GPS tag and two-way text based pager all in the space of a computerized clipboard (United Parcel Service of America inc, 1994). The functionality of this device improved flexibility and increased efficiency. The DIAD board is used to scan packages and replace the hand written delivery records. DIAD has blue tooth capability allowing information to constantly be transferred to the main servers in Paramus, New Jersey (Black, 2010). The DIAD makes
Instructor Cretson Dalmadge
MIS 3360-W1
February 3, 2010
In order for an organization to be more competitive, it’s imperative for them to stay abreast of the latest technology. “The early 1990’s marked the start of another era of change at UPS (United Parcel Service of America inc, 1994).” Technological Change was necessary to accommodate the increased volume of packages. This paper will explore the challenges faced by the business along with the network functionalities and the benefits that the changes in technology contributed. Organizations are constantly striving to gain a competitive advantage. UPS faced adversity during the transition from manual operations to electronic transmissions. The challenges they faced were finding a company to assist them in implementing the wireless technology that was necessary to support the cellular service need to operate the DIAD system. “In the 1980 UPS purchased two leading technological companies to develop and to test specialized packaged tracking equipment (Reuters, 2010).” As a result of the acquisitions UPS was able to create a partnership with four major telecommunications firms to develop the system required to implement the DIAD board. The DIAD board “Delivery Information Acquisition Device (Reuters, 2010),” revolutionized the way UPS received package delivery information. The DIAD board is a multi-purpose hand held device used by UPS drivers. This device that is carried by each ups drivers functions as a time clock, GPS tag and two-way text based pager all in the space of a computerized clipboard (United Parcel Service of America inc, 1994). The functionality of this device improved flexibility and increased efficiency. The DIAD board is used to scan packages and replace the hand written delivery records. DIAD has blue tooth capability allowing information to constantly be transferred to the main servers in Paramus, New Jersey (Black, 2010). The DIAD makes