Extreme automation: FedEx Ground hubs speed deliveries

Computerworld - To someone standing outside the FedEx Ground distribution hub in Hagerstown, Md., the package delivery business appears deceptively simple.

On one side of the building, workers unload trucks full of boxes and parcels that have been picked up from businesses and various regional drop-off points. On the opposite side of the building, they load the same packages -- now sorted by ZIP code -- onto more trucks. The outbound vehicles then head for points north, south, east and west to deliver their time-sensitive loads of small packages on a specified date -- FedEx Ground's specialty -- to destinations anywhere in the continental United States and Canada.

But if you venture inside the cavernous, warehouse-like facility, it's a different story. First, there's the noise -- a loud and steady hum from the network of whizzing conveyor belts that speed up to 7,500 packages an hour through a highly complex and thoroughly automated categorizing and tracking process that involves a primary sort, a secondary sort and no fewer than 12 scans before packages reach their destinations.

The scans record each package's physical dimensions, weight and destination ZIP code, plus other information, such as where the package is at any given moment, whether in the hub or en route to its destination.

At the hub, "after a package is unloaded from a trailer, the next time it is touched by human hands is at the loading dock," says Ken Spangler, a senior vice president and CIO at FedEx Ground, a $7 billion unit of FedEx Corp. "Everything in between is automated."

And "everything in between" -- such as the routing of the package -- can also be changed on the fly. But it all happens at lightning speed, and that's critical because winning market share in the ultra-competitive $31 billion domestic ground package-delivery business comes down to a matter of milliseconds.

"Over the last five years, we have been on a mission to get faster and faster," Spangler says. "We re-engineer and speed up our lanes an average of twice a year, and sometimes more frequently than that. Over 80,000 ZIP-code-to-ZIP-code lanes are at least a day faster now." As a result, the company's ground service is able to deliver in a single business day almost a quarter of the 3.5 million packages it handles daily. Most packages -- about 85% -- are delivered within three business days.

In the past six years, FedEx Ground has fully automated 53 of its terminals and opened nine new hubs, such as the 600,000-plus-square-foot Hagerstown facility, which has been expanded twice since it opened in 2005. The business result: FedEx Ground has gained market share for 25 consecutive quarters, notes Spangler.

This independent paper from senior analyst Jon Collins at FreeForm Dynamics considers how Web-based security threats are evolving, within the context of IT trends including mobile, home computing and other forms of remote access that could potentially increase the attack surface of the companies. It defines the scale and types of threat, what to look for in a corporate web security solution and compares the different types of technological approach available to companies and the processes that need to be considered for effective protection.

Read now.

Security is not an option. This KnowledgeVault Series offers professional advice how to be proactive in the fight against cybercrimes and multi-layered security threats; how to adopt a holistic approach to protecting and managing data; and how to hire a qualified security assessor. Make security your Number 1 priority.

Read now.

Social-networking sites have revolutionized how businesses use the Internet. Instead of relying on faltering newspapers to find job candidates, companies can access thousands of potential employees through Facebook and Twitter. But social-networking sites have also left businesses vulnerable to new security threats. So are they tools to be used or security traps to be avoided?

Read now.

Article-Marketing Automation: Pros and Cons

Over at my journalism group-blog, “Considerations,” I often receive e-mails from article marketers and freelance writers who want to publish guest-posts. Since I advertise the opportunity, I welcome the inquiries — but within reason. There are good and bad sides to the digital coin.

First, most SEO marketers and content writers understand the basic principle: that “content is king.” In general, the websites that provide frequent, quality content will be those that tend to rank highly in organic search-results and social-media marketing — especially though keyword targeting. Google rewards those website that update themselves regularly with new content (as opposed to so-called “business card” websites that have static pages).

As Cristian Lungu notes at Search-Engine Journal:

Yet, there are other benefits that article marketing offers and many of these benefits are of the psychological variety. In other words, an impression is left with the reader upon reading the material. Whether the reader is informed, entertained, or both, reading the article can provide a positive impression that leads him/her to patronize the website the article is supporting. Those hoping to maximize the potential of their search engine optimization campaign need to venture beyond just looking to boost rankings. They will need to employ a campaign that promotes the ability to generate sales and revenues. Really, without enhanced sales and revenues, a marketing campaign falters. This will be the case no matter how a particular website is ranked in the search engines.

The aforementioned “psychological variety” of benefits refers mainly to branding and being a “knowledge leader.” If your website manufactures, produces, or sells “widgets,” then you want your website to become the ultimate resource for “widgets” — as in, anyone who wants to know the latest news and information on “widgets” will visit and follow your website for that purpose. After all, people interested in the topic will see your advertisements and/or calls-to-action and become more likely to become paying customers over time.

Article-Marketing Automation

Of course, this SEO and SEM principle is obvious in the Internet Age. However, the principle extends to other marketing practices — some good, some bad. If a company spends the time and money to develop quality content, then it will naturally want to promote that content as much as possible to maximize the return on its investment. The best method is through social-media marketing (SMM) — the placement of social-sharing buttons on each page of a website, article, or blog post along with the active promotion on Facebook and Twitter accounts.

However, other methods are more “gray,” for lack of a better term. As Lungu notes:

One of the best strategies to employ would be to write a high quality article and then remake four versions of the article. Not the word used here was remake and not rewrite or spin. You do not want to write one high quality article and then produce four inferior copies. You will want the writer to painstakingly rewrite the article so that the original intent and quality remains. Think in terms of remaking a motion picture. You always want the remake to stand on its own as a quality product.

However, many SEO writers and online marketers take this principle and incorporate it in less-than-successful ways. (See “Top 10 Blogs, More General Keywords, and a Content Farm.”) If a company owns, say, five websites, then the standard practice is to create an original, insightful article and then rewrite it in different words in five different versions — one of which will be published on each of the sites. But the problem is that each of the four rewrites will inherently be of less quality than the original — particularly since the so-called “best practice” is to employ cheap Indians or other low-cost labor to rewrite the article. After all, Google only recognizes and rewards original content. This practice of article-marketing automation does not always provide the best results.

In today’s Internet Age, the best results will occur for companies that produce as much original content as possible rather than copies of copies of copies. Of course, this requires additional investment — and not every website owner will be able to pay the extra cost. After all, when marketers submit guest-posts to my “Considerations” blog, I will reject it unless it is an original, lengthy, insightful piece whose content has not been published elsewhere. The key is to develop good content using the best information from SEO-software reviews.