Founded in 1907 as a messenger company in the United States, Atlanta-based United Parcel Service (UPS) has grown into a $49.7 billion corporation (in 2008) by focusing on the goal of enabling commerce around the globe. Today UPS is a global company with one of the most recognized and admired brands in the world and has become the world's largest package delivery company and a leading global provider of specialized transportation and logistics services. Every day, UPS manage the flow of goods, funds, and information in more than 200 countries and territories worldwide. To ensure the ongoing success of the enterprise, UPS has invested heavily in information management systems and enabling information technologies to support its core business processes.

For example, UPS recently invested over $100 million in an ambitious project that installed advanced wireless LANs, next-generation scanners, and short-range wireless Bluetooth throughout its 2,000 worldwide distribution centers. The project allows package sorters to move freely with cordless optical scanners to capture data from packages. Then, this data is sent to the package-tracking system via Bluetooth and retransmitted to the wireless LAN. The data generated within each distribution center is then integrated with the rest of UPS' packager tracking data worldwide. To further automate this process, the organization has enabled each of its individual delivery personnel to capture package-level information at each pick-up and delivery. Here the organization has employed geographical position systems and cellular "WiFi" technologies to integrate trucking, airplane, and ship-based data with that coming from its many distribution centers.

Two advanced wireless technologies are currently used in these projects: Bluetooth and the IEEE 802.11g wireless standard. The 802.11g standard (also known as "WiFi" for wireless fidelity") defines the rules used by a local area network to transmit data over the air. In a typical WiFi network, users connect to wireless access points that are, in turn, connected to an Ethernet. Radio signals enable communication over an area of several hundred feet to 1,000 feet. In addition, roaming users can move from one access point to another like cell phone subscribers can move from cell to cell in a cellular phone network. Bluetooth is a wireless personal area network technology developed by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group, a consortium of companies led by Ericsson, IBM, Nokia and Toshiba. It was conceived for short-range transmission of digital data between mobile devices (PDAs and phones) and desktop devices.

The UPS advanced network has three inter-working design elements. In the first, network- "wearable" computing and communication devices play a key role. A cordless optical scanner mounted on a finger ring captures tracking numbers from the packages. Then, the wireless ring scanner transmits the data to a package-tracking system carried on the hip of the package sorter. Bluetooth is used for this finger-to-hip communication. The hip-mounted tracking system runs on a Windows CE operating system-based terminal, code-named Emerald, developed by Motorola. UPS has purchased more than 50,000 Emerald terminals as part of its distribution center project.
In the second part of the network solution, the Emerald terminal retransmits the data received from the ring scanner to a wireless access point via WiFi. In the third and final part of the new network solution, the access point transmits the data across an Ethernet LAN in the distribution center to a server-based application that ships the data across UPS' WAN via a network server running in conjunction with either point-to-point fixed lines (a.k.a. leased lines) or over the more flexible cost structure of its telecomm partner's public switched digital network (PSDN). The data then flows via this WAN network to UPS' centralized package-tracking application running on servers in New Jersey. To address security concerns, UPS requires password-protected logins from all users and has implemented encryption technology on its networks. However, because most of the data transmitted over the wireless LAN consists of package-tracking numbers, transmission security is not as big an issue as it could be.

Thus the UPS organization shares data over a private, secure network, running on its own privately-held wireless/wired network typologies, as well as those networking services (both wireless and wired) owned and operated by its telecomm partners. In addition, UPS maintains a public internet site through which the public may track the status of their individual UPS shipments. UPS also maintains an Intranet to coordinate internal employee activities and enterprise business processes and to share corporate information and services with its employees worldwide. Lastly, with its larger global accounts and business partners, UPS collaborates through Extranet-based Web services. In summary then, as a global distribution and logistics company, UPS employs all of the different types of networking services discussed in MISM 2301.

UPS Case Homework Questions

1. What is their business and why is package tracking important to UPS's customers?

2. What information needs to be collected, how/when/where does it get collected and with whom is it shared to support the tracking of UPS shipments?

3. Draw a detailed diagram of the various networks that are linked together by UPS to solve this problem. In each instance, identify the type of network option chosen and its key IT components. Your drawing should embrace the entire process from package pick-up at the customer's location to its ultimate delivery.