United Parcel Service (UPS)
Canvas Category OEM : Transportation Services
UPS (NYSE: UPS) is one of the world’s largest package delivery companies with 2020 revenue of $84.6 billion and provides a broad range of integrated logistics solutions for customers in more than 220 countries and territories. The company’s more than 540,000 employees embrace a strategy that is simply stated and powerfully executed: Customer First, People Led, Innovation Driven. UPS is committed to reducing its impact on the environment and supporting the communities we serve around the world. UPS also takes a strong and unwavering stance in support of diversity, equality, and inclusion.
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UPS Worldport: Inside the Giant Logistics Powerhouse
UPS Delivers Next Phase in Smart Package/Smart Facility Initiative with RFID
After building RFID reading functionality into more than 1,000 distribution sites across its network, tracking millions of “smart packages” daily, global logistics company UPS is expanding its Smart Package Smart Facility (SPSF) solution.
UPS is in the process this summer of equipping all its brown trucks to read RFID tagged packages. A total of 60,000 vehicles will go live with the technology by the end of the year, with another approximated 40,000 coming into the system in 2025.
The smart vehicles installation is Wave 2 in a four-phase deployment of SPSF, one part of UPS’ wide scale Network of the Future (NoF) digital transformation initiative. UPS’s NoF will introduce end to end automation in its sortation facilities, including robotic systems. Within NoF is the SPSF system, for which RFID feeds data into a platform leveraging Generative AI and Digital Twins. With RFID tags on packages and reader antennas in facilities and vehicles “we’re moving from a scanning-based logistics network to a sensing-based network,” said Bell.
The average UPS sorting facility has about 155 miles of conveyor belts, sorting over four million packages every day. The seamless operation requires tracking, routing and prioritizing packages. By building the RFID sensing technology into its facilities, the company has eliminated 20 million barcode scans from daily operations. For the RFID industry, UPS’ sheer volume of packages shipped daily may make this initiative the largest implementation of UHF RAIN RFID technology to date.
UPS relies on Geekplus during automation journey
UPS Supply Chain Solutions, which has been in warehouse and distribution for more than 30 years, is in the midst of a large push toward automation in its 35 million square feet of warehouse space globally. UPS SCS has been working with Geekplus to automate North American facilities for the past few years. The most recent project is the UPS Velocity facility in Louisville.
Warehouse automation also helps UPS SCS deal with customer growth. Stearman told the audience about a customer that needed 50-percent more capacity. Immediately. In a six-week period, his team brought in additional Geekplus QR-based robots and racks to meet that need. With other warehouse automation providers, he said, something like that could have taken anywhere from 6 to 18 months.
UPS Expands Deal With Google Cloud to Prepare for Surge in Data
Logistics company to gain network, storage and compute capacity to help it analyze new data coming from initiatives such as RFID chips on packages
More Fleets Are Utilizing Remote Diagnostics
A growing number of motor carriers are taking advantage of remote diagnostics to streamline vehicle maintenance and reduce downtime, but fleets must know how to filter through the data to use this information effectively.
Remote diagnostics services, which are available through all major truck manufacturers and various component and technology suppliers, enable fleet managers to monitor engine fault codes and maintenance issues while the truck is on the road.
Impinj Raises $22M to Accelerate RFID Product Development
Impinj, Inc., a fabless semiconductor company developing Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) solutions for supply chain and logistics automation, announced that Mobius Venture Capital, Unilever Technology Ventures and the UPS Strategic Enterprise Fund have joined the company’s previous investors, ARCH Venture Partners, Madrona Venture Group and Polaris Venture Partners, to provide $22 million in third-round funding. Impinj also announced that Aaron Cheatham, a Principal at Mobius Venture Capital which led the financing round, has joined Impinj’s board of directors.
Impinj will use the proceeds of this financing to move into volume production of its RFID products and to expand operations both at its Seattle headquarters and at its Orange County, California facility opened this January.