UPS versus FedEx: Head-to-Head on Wireless Federal Express and United Parcel Service are always seeking a competitive edge over one another. And as the two companies are encroaching on each other's primary businesses (UPS on overnight delivery and FedEx on ground delivery), they are concurrently stepping up their wireless deployments as well.

The reason: operational efficiency-a critical business requirement aimed at shaving costs, increasing reach, and doing more with the same resources. Their approaches to deploying wireless technologies over the past 15 years have been markedly different; FedEx has led the way with cutting-edge applications, while UPS has been slower and more deliberate. FedEx deploys new technologies as soon as it can justify the cost and demonstrate improved efficiencies and customer benefit. UPS refreshes its technology base roughly every five to seven years, when it rolls out a unified system in stages that it synchronizes with the life span of the older system.

But the goal is the same for both companies: to use next-generation wireless technologies to better manage the delivery of millions of packages that flow through dozens of sorting facilities every day. The two companies are exploiting new wireless technologies in their differing attempts at aiding the two main components of their operations: pickup/delivery and packaging/sorting. Both are also looking ahead to potential applications of radio frequency identification and GPS wireless technologies.

SEEKING NEW BENEFITS FROM WIRELESS

In addition to their major package-scanning retooling efforts, FedEx and UPS continue to investigate what business benefits they might gain from other wireless technologies. Two have gained particular attention: RFID tags, which could replace bar code scanners, and GPS, which can precisely locate field units.

As UPS and FedEx are showing, wireless technology provides the medium through which dynamic exchange happens. Interconnectedness allows drivers to talk, computers to interact, and businesses to work together. Whether it is wireless routing or fueling of trucks, it is all happening dynamically.

Although few companies have the scale of UPS and FedEx, they can adopt many of the wireless technologies scaled to their size, and use devices and network components that fit their operations.

Questions

1. Explain the fundamentals of wireless fidelity.

2. Describe the differences between UPS and FedEx's use of wi-fi.

3. Identify two types of wireless business opportunities the companies could use to gain a competitive advantage.

4. How could RFID help the companies deal with potential security issues?

5. Develop a Bluetooth, GPS, or satellite product that the parcel delivery business could use to improve efficiencies.