Delivering Innovation at the Post Office

THE INNOVATION:

Collaborating with arch-rivals UPS and FedEx to share strategic bits of their asset infrastructure and making them each more efficient and effective.

Thomas Day
Chief Sustainability Officer
United States Postal Service
www.usps.com

What We are Doing

Excerpts:

Together, we provide more efficient networks at lower cost, while improving our impacts on the environment and reducing our carbon footprint.
We have to be very careful how we cooperate… I am constantly reminded by lawyers… There are boundaries on how you do that, you have to be careful you don’t violate the Antitrust Act…
Our services intersect… our networks actually exchange product and data. UPS and FedEx have very good distribution networks -- lots of planes, lots of trucks… Our strength is getting to individual addresses and businesses, which in the U.S. is 151 million…
If you mail an Express-mail piece through the U.S. Post Office, it is more than likely going to go on a FedEx plane tonight and be distributed in their Memphis hub by FedEx employees, back out on a FedEx plane, and then delivered tomorrow by the postal service… If you live in a rural area, if you receive a package via FedEx or UPS, chances are it will be delivered by the US postal delivery carrier.

Why Collaboration is Important

Excerpts:

So much of transaction [systems] is moving to the world of eCommerce… In the end, the product, the atoms, have to be moved, they have to be delivered to you. So having an efficient logistics [system]... to get it to the user, but also to get it back if returned... is every bit as important [as the electronic system] for making eCommerce work.
What makes it financially viable also turns out to be environmentally the right thing to do…. One of the possible outcomes of this whole thing is that it will reduce the carbon footprint of the individual consumer.
I really came into this job because this was something I wanted to do, this was a great opportunity to make a difference. The important thing that I do is look at the business, and understand where the opportunities lie…. Identify them, get the right resources together. How do you get all the right functional groups to make this a reality?

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Sue Lebeck
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