Sadly no matter how skilled people are at parcel deliveries they do not necessarily posess a magic solution to the ailments of the aviation industry, no matter how convinced that are that they do.
If one of Mr Logistic's vans gets stuck in the snow the next 8-10 drops it has to do today will be delayed, then eventually cancelled. Then tomorrows drops are going to be delayed too, plus the backlog from today doubling the workload. But the van is still stuck on the M25 because the council didn't clear the roads and the driver is out of hours. I gather this doesn't happen in the "logistics" world, and I wonder how this is an unfamiliar concept there.
You have 200 such trucks. Most are in this situation. For every missed/late delivery/pickup there are 150 irate customers who all want information now about when the van will arrive. The depot they're waiting at is expecting a dozen other such deliveries from other companies with 150 people to each, the number of phones is finite, as are the number of staff employed by the depot, which has no particular allegience to (or often interest in) one delivery company any more than the others. In normal times 4 agents handle these deliveries. Suddenly, due to events 1000 miles away they find themselves buried under thousands of customers and 50 staff wouldn't help much. How much of this do you suppose they think is their problem to sort out? I suppose they thoughtfully pop down to the employment exchange and fetch a busload of skilled people along at 30 minutes notice, but I am only guessing as I don't work in the delivery business, I'm just an airline pilot so what the heck would I know...Not sure who's going to pay them though, or plan it, authorise it, find the info to equip them with...these are not empoyees of the van company remember, they work for one of the 200 often pretty basic depots you deliver to and they are poorly paid and sometime- not always - similarly motivated. After an hour of irate abuse do you really suppose even the keenest will stick around? This is in a business, remember, where it is too hard and time-consuming to even reliably or regularly persuade the depot to give any, let alone extensive detail about late deliveries (beyond a blackboard saying "On time", "Canx" etc) even when everything else is running normally. This is due to depots being institutionally poorly equipped to disseminate information and their staff often not caring - it's a warehouse thing, delivery companies have been tearing their hair out over it for decades. Perhaps if depots weren't subject to unprofitable contracts by cutthroat delivery companies...perhaps if the customers were willing to accept huge price increases...perhaps if the hauliers wouldn't lose their market share by doing so...
The angry people waiting for their deliveries all try to phone the logistics company to find out when their parcel is arriving, but who knows when the council are going to clear the M25, but that depends on when the M1 is cleared to get a new driver down, but he's waiting for the van from the Wirral to get him there and its still snowing in the Wirral. Then there are the 8 deliveries from yesterday to do before yours. Or do they cancel those to please you at the expense of everyone else? Does that then please the people waiting for the other 7? Plus todays deliveries that are still in the warehouse? The van company employs 50 people in 2 shifts to track and run the operation normally, which actually allows them a reasonable amount of slack for eventualities. Today they've got 150.000 people all calling at once to chase their orders. That's hard work for 25 people when they'd need 100 to even get a rough picture of the state of the network, (let alone 2000 to field all the customer calls) bearing in mind that the contractor staff in all the depots are too busy to answer the phones, no one's been in the office for hours anyway, it is still snowing, and the council (most of whom are still at home, snowed in) don't know where their gritter drivers are coming from as they're all out of hours too. Is that Mr logistic's fault? Is he in a position to do anything useful about this? No and No!
If the staff chase councils, depots and the met office there is no one to talk to the customers, but they don't have four, six, ten times the usual number of trained staff hanging around on standby to come in (how?) to answer questions to which there is no answer in the first place.
Is it really their "fault"? Does it make the company uncaring ot inept because it cannot cope with impossible odds? That is Canute's way of looking at it.
Those at work bust their arses sometimes for days on end, often sleeping at work to try to get this sorted.
And then get lectured how useless they are by someone with a paper-round...
So yes, there comes a point where you retreat like an army facing hopless odds to regroup and try again later.One hopes lessons are learned, but reinventing Clausewitz (spelling) and retraining everyone from Generals down (including the defense contractors, parliament etc over which you have no control) takes time, even for a delivery company...
PP, you cannot keep an airport open regardless of how many ploughs you have if it's snowing hard enough, you know that. The councils can't keep the roads open either as you know full well. If not only your call-centre but also the depots you deliver to suddenly needed (on your behalf) to increase productivity by 5000% I doubt even you'd manage it in less than 3 months or so, let alone the few hrs you seem to expect airlines to achieve. And at what cost? The problem with aviation is the large number of critical outside agencies and inputs upon which you depend utterly- any one will stop a flight in it's tracks, any two failing will stop many, lose several - or one global dependancy, ie weather, and your problems grow exponentially to a level that no system can cope with.
As a businessman you could make £squillions if you were able to solve this problem, and I gather from your posts that you feel you well able to do it better than the airlines.
I challenge you to try, though if your business skills ar a poor as your judgement of my customer concerns and awareness (of which you know nothing) I wouldn't bother.
I'm simply amazed something as obvious as this needs explaining!
Last edited by Agaricus bisporus; 9th Dec 2010 at 20:31.