If you thought United Parcel Service was just trucks and planes and boxes, you'd be way off base (although the company does manage the world's ninth-largest airline). At an event convened by the company in New York yesterday, UPS highlighted just how deeply IT is incorporated into its daily operations, and how UPS uses that information to move itself and its customers toward greener pastures.
Unsurprisingly, UPS works on a massive scale, and Dave Barnes, UPS's Senior Vice President and CIO, told attendees at its event yesterday that it spends $1 billion a year on technology. Green tech figures into UPS's practices in a number of ways, primarily in waste reduction and improved efficiency.
Paper has long been the albatross of shipping, and Barnes explained that, by switching to a paperless invoice system for international shipments, the company has saved 150 million sheets of paper since 2008.
That savings has been achieved through the use of the ubiquitous handheld scanner UPS drivers carry, the Delivery Information Acquisition Device (also known as the DIAD, and pictured at right). It's a key plank in UPS's efficiency and waste-reduction system.
The DIAD does far more than scan packages and save paper; the device, which is now now in its fifth generation, also includes an imaging scanner, a color, autofocus flash camera, and 600 megabytes per second of WiFi access (UPS says that it can be used to download training videos).
The other gadget that UPS is using to cut paper waste and boost efficiency is a combo scanner and paperless printer that we first reported on in November 2008. The HP handheld sp400 lets UPS warehouse workers scan and print quickly and paperlessly, as you can see in this video from HP. The schematic is below, by way of UPS's presentation yesterday. The missing info from the second arrow at the bottom is, presumably, the inkjet printer.
Next page: UPS's Green Data Center
