Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Wireless Packs Punch With UPS

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 14:00:21 -0400

Wireless Packs Punch With UPS

Delivery company combines GPRS, CDMA for broadest coverage nationwide. 
 
By Brad Smith
October 15, 2003
Wireless Week

LOUISVILLE, Ky.

It's 11:15 p.m. at the Louisville International Airport and the first cargo jets
have pulled up to a gigantic building the size of 15 Louisiana Superdomes. In
three hours, some 105 of the large planes will fly in and out.

The parking lots outside the building are jam-packed with cars because most of the
20,000 employees who work in the building are on overnight shifts.

This is the UPS Worldport, the main U.S. hub for all overnight packages that flow
through the delivery company's system. Completed in 2002 at a cost of more than $1
billion, it also is a hub of wireless technology.

Technology is of major importance at the Worldport because, as CEO Mike Eskew
recently told a group of visiting journalists, each package that runs through the
UPS system is handled independently. No two packages are given the same treatment,
which demands close tracking because the hub is capable of handling more than
300,000 packages an hour. Each is scanned about a dozen times and in Louisville
they can travel on 122 miles of conveyer belts until they reach the right cargo
plane. To say this is a complex supply chain is an understatement.

UPS uses a combination of wireless technologies in its delivery chain–analog and
digital cellular, WLAN, Bluetooth, private radio and even voice over wireless IP.
Right now it is installing what it believes will be the world's largest WLAN,
stitched together with 12,000 access points around the globe. In addition, UPS has
started trials at 68 of its Chicago stores to provide Wi-Fi hot spot service for
its customers.

"During the last eight or 10 years, we decided to look ahead (on technology) and
we felt that wireless would be the compelling technology going forward," says John
Nallin, vice president of global network services for UPS.

UPS already was using a 900 MHz analog private radio solution and has been a
long-time user of the Motient packet data network. But the company is moving away
from proprietary, private radio schemes because it feels it can gain added
functionality at a lower cost with a standards-based solution, Nallin says.

One of the main UPS wireless devices is the DIAD (delivery information access
device), which package carriers use to record deliveries, including signatures and
times. UPS is now in the third version of the device, which originally was made by
Motorola but now comes from Symbol Technologies.

UPS has retrofitted the DIAD 3 with GPRS for wide-area networking, adding to the
original Bluetooth capabilities. It has more than 60,000 of the devices in use now
in the United States using the AT&T Wireless network. Nallin says the company is
in discussions with both Verizon Wireless and Sprint PCS to add their CDMA
networks. The combination of GPRS and CDMA will give it the broadest possible
coverage, he says. "We believe that between CDMA and GPRS, we'll be able to handle
the vast majority of the U.S.," Nallin says. "We have mapped the U.S. and know
where CDMA will be best and where GPRS will be best."

Because of the retrofit to the DIAD 3, the planned rollout of the DIAD 4 has been
delayed somewhat. The next-generation device, also made by Symbol, has a color
screen, built-in GPS, infrared and can include either a GPRS or CDMA 1X radio.

At the Worldport and other hubs, UPS is adopting new scanning devices that use
both Bluetooth and 802.11b WLAN. The device, called UPScan, is a combination of a
ring scanner and belt-mounted handheld computer. The ring scans bar codes on the
packages and transmits the information via Bluetooth to the computer, which
catalogs and sends the data to the network via Wi-Fi.

Thirteen sites will use the UPScan by the end of the year and the company will
continue to add locations until the installations are complete in 2005. Motorola
built the belt computer, which it calls a waist-wearable terminal. The device uses
Microsoft Windows CE, and the rings are made by Symbol. The two companies worked
together to eliminate any interference issues between Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, which
both use the 2.4 GHz spectrum.

UPS previously used a similar ring scanner and belt computer but it was connected
by a cable, which was the most frequently damaged part. "We needed to eliminate
the damage that the cables suffer," Nallin says. "It was very costly on the
maintenance side."

Nallin says UPS believes using the UPScan will save it more than $13 million
annually with savings in repair costs, replacement costs and worker downtime. UPS
drivers, and later the package handlers, initially were reluctant to use the DIAD
and UPScan but have become so accustomed to them that "now you can't get it away
from them," he says.

Is UPS happy with its decision to go wireless? You bet, Nallin says, because
"wireless has just begun. You can almost let your imagination run on how you will
do things with wireless in the future."

http://www.wirelessweek.com/index.asp?layout=article&articleid=CA329137&spacedesc=Departments&stt=000

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