Flowers are one of the most common expressions of affection on Valentine’s Day. Across the country, millions of wives and girlfriends (and husbands and boyfriends, too) will be surprised with fresh flowers on Feb. 14.

Most of those flowers come from South America through Miami. As the largest air cargo carrier at Miami International Airport, UPS plays a big part in delivering Valentine’s Day. Learn more in the attached video about what it takes to deliver all those flowers fresh and on time.

The Chinese New Year has always been about the reunion with family and relatives. Chinese from all over the world would return home to be with their families. Well, in Singapore it is no different. This Chinese New Year, I know of several overseas friends and colleagues who will be returning to Singapore for their reunions.

As for me and many Singaporean Chinese families, it’s all about coordinating the timing for each activity. It used to be so much easier before I was married. I just follow the schedule as set out by my parents on who to visit and when.

Even then it was complicated, because timings are highly synchronized and we have multiple relatives to visit. Now, there are however, a few families that we must visit at very précised time. These are more senior family members, who are also visited by many other relatives at that time. In logistics terms, I guess these are “hub” families.

If we miss the timing at any of these “hub” families, it means that we won’t get to see those other families and we will have to make an extra trip in order to meet them during this Chinese New Year.

Now that I am married, things get even more complicated. I need to take into consideration my parents’ schedule and my in-laws’ schedule. We have to plan and prioritize so that we can accommodate as much as we can. This reminds me of network planning at work.

Oh, there is more, with the addition of two kids in the past three years the planning has become even more complex. Keeping everything on track and on time will be a constant challenge, but this is once a year. This is about family and it is definitely worth it.

Wishing everyone a prosperous new year!

Kung Hei Fat Choy!

This weekend, millions of Chinese will travel afar to spend their New Year in their home town. I might find myself traveling away from my home town of Hong Kong and on the road in China.  Two years ago, my family and I drove straight through wealthy and industrious Guangdong province and deep into the less developed and mostly agricultural Guangxi province. There, we saw the hauntingly beautiful karst mountains along the Li River near Yangshuo and the Longsheng Rice Terraces near Guilin.

However, this blog entry isn’t about what I saw around Guilin. You can see for yourself in the photo collage I’ve provided here!  Rather, I was most impressed by the 1,800 kilometers of road and expressways that took us to our destination and back home.

Clockwise from top left: firecracker debris strewn all over this village along the Li River; a small town between Guangdong and Guangxi provinces; narcissus flowers and candy boxes filled with traditional Chinese sweets; karst mountains along the Li River; Cheri Chow on a boat ride along the Li River

Since we took off from Hong Kong on the last day of the lunar calendar, the traffic was extremely light.  So light that the brand new expressway was empty of vehicles and looked impressively like the long stretches of expressways in North America.  For hours, there wasn’t another car, motorcycle or truck in sight.  Most of the toll booths were closed.  Rural China was resting.

As a result, it took just 10 hours to get from Hong Kong to Guilin. Just a few years ago and prior to the existence of the new expressways, it would’ve taken more than double the time to get to Guilin by road. According to the China Economic Weekly, China’s highways increased from just 16.3 thousand kilometers before 2001 to 76 thousand kilometers between by 2010 – more than quadrupled!  This newfound road mobility leads to a plethora of development opportunities in various industries, including from tourism, automotive, manufacturing and even logistics.

Compared to air travel, road travel has its advantages too.  It gave me the rare chance to see rural and undeveloped China.  Compared to Guangzhou and its satellite cities of brilliant neons and grating sounds, the scene in sleepy neighboring Guangxi was startlingly different. The villages were dimly lit. There was actual smoke spiraling out of chimneys. Farm animals were let loose wandering.  And there were lone people walking between villages on long stretches of the highways.

Our drive back to Hong Kong from Guilin took place late into the night of the first day of the lunar New Year. But rural China was awake again, celebrating the New Year with an impressive display of roadside fireworks and streets were littered with red debris from long strings of firecrackers.  All I could hear was boom boom pow and think that beyond the dazzle of the Pearl River Delta, the rest of Southern China is catching up fast. Soon enough, the quiet highways will be bursting with cars, motorcycles and trucks.

Nigeria is a country blessed with abundant human and material resources. It is the most populated African country with more than 150 million people.

They are also blessed not to have the serious natural disasters common around the world. Typhoons, hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, etc…

The country has also known relative peace and tranquility over time. But, in recent years the political divides and ethnic differences has lead to militants in the south, terrorist in the north, religious upheavals in the middle belts resulting in thousands of deaths.

Certain parts of the country now also suffer from extreme poverty and underdevelopment. Add to that, the country now suffers from droughts in the north, heavy downpour resulting in flooded cities, hunger and deprivation, serious ethnic and religious strife.

Since 2007, the Logistics Emergency Team (LET) has been responding to disasters and there are now more than 100 people trained. Working with partners from UPS, Agility, TNT and Maersk, the UN World Food Programme has developed an exploratory program called the Logistics Capacity Assessment (LCA).  The compiled LCA would enable the humanitarian community and emergency responders to build scenarios and make accurate logistics plans in case massive assistance may be required for any part of the country.

This program is designed to prepare Nigeria, in the case of disaster humanitarian aids becomes inevitable. During our recent planning/training we developed contingency plans for the movement of goods and supplies into and throughout the country.

As someone who lives here and watches these events unfolds on a daily basis, I believe this LCA is long overdue.

UPSers from around the world recently were asked how they make the holidays sweeter. Here’s what some of them had to say.

John – Kentucky

Telling someone who is working at a gas station or restaurant that I appreciate what they do.

Leslie – Texas

I take in baked goods to my mother’s nursing home where she has been an Alzheimer’s patient for nearly nine years. It is very good to see their faces light up when they get something special for them. Some of these patients rarely get visitors.

Chi Wah Kwok – Hong Kong, China

Enjoying time with my loved ones.

Velma – South Carolina

What touches my heart is when I bake for someone who has nobody to care for them anymore; seeing the smile on their faces when I knock on their door with a plate of baked goodies. WOW! My heart skips a beat when I see their eyes light up with hope again, after thinking they had been forgotten. This is one of my reasons for baking for the season.

Eamon – Pennsylvania

In our house we make the holidays sweeter by not forgetting the little ones. Our dogs are so often overlooked when we make ourselves all these nice treats. We make doggie cookies and such to help them feel the holiday spirit.

Rene – Netherlands

Reaching out to the less fortunate around should be part of everyone’s December holidays. It will make you and the other warmer during the cold days.

Jennifer – Indiana

My husband, kids, and I, have a tradition each Christmas Eve. We all sit together in our family room and watch “It’s a Wonderful Life.” My children are not put off by the fact that the movie is in black and white either. They love it. We eat the cookies we had all baked and decorated together while the movie. It is just so wonderful to be all together creating these memories for our children to cherish.

Brenda – Kentucky

I always remember to help UPS sprinkle a little extra brown sugar on every batch of packages, measuring delivery time perfectly, never being a cookie-cutter company, and using all the right ingredients in the dough to grow the business.

Raquel – Sao Paulo, Brazil

Baking sugar cookies is a family tradition.

John – Arizona

It’s hard to make the holidays sweeter in tough times like this when you are trying to scrape by and provide for your family. I like to bake cookies with my kids to give out to family members as an inexpensive way to show our love for them. I’m not sure where I would be if it wasn’t for UPS. I am very grateful for the job I have. There are too many families out of work right now.

Rachel – New Jersey

Unfortunately, I lost my home to Hurricane Irene and will be spending the holidays in a hotel. I will make it sweeter by giving to families and children in need. My life will eventually go back to normal, but a lot of theirs will not. You always must give to those in need because one day you may be the one asking others for help.

Balpreet – Mississauga, Ontario

Love is the primary ingredient in having the perfect holiday. Give to those in need and don’t think about what you receive.

How do you make the holidays sweeter?

For the ninth October, UPS employees around the world have joined with their friends and family to take part in volunteer projects in local communities.  At UPS, we call it Global Volunteer Month. 

This October, UPS expects our volunteers to complete 275,000 hours of service by painting, landscaping, and building in places like Brazil, Hong Kong, and Louisville, Kentucky.  And, we’re well on our way to reaching that goal.

This year’s Global Volunteer Month has started with some pretty inspiring projects. For example:

• In South Africa, UPS volunteers worked at the Mpumelelo Day Care Centre, a part of the Kempton Park HIV Care Centre, to paint and repair classrooms and playgrounds. 
• While in Brazil, a UPS team built assistive technology items, like cardboard walkers, for disabled children at Rua Pedro Taques.

Here are photos taken during those two events.  We look forward to even more inspiring projects…

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This guest post is from Juanita Rilling, Director of the Center for International Disaster Information (CIDI). The CIDI is an education organization that supports international relief through encouraging effective donations by individuals, groups, businesses, and communities. Juanita’s post originally appeared at Good Intentions Are Not Enough.

I have good news for people with big hearts and skinny wallets!  Concerns that an ailing US economy will discourage people from donating in support of international disaster relief have inspired us at the Center for International Disaster Information (CIDI) to tweak our outreach materials.  Bargain-hunting humanitarians take note – the most effective donations are also the least expensive for donors.

Here’s an example: 100,000 liters of clean water hydrate 40,000 people for a day.  That amount of water purchased in-country costs about $500.  The same amount of water purchased in the US costs about $50,000.  But here’s the kicker – transportation expenses, customs fees and delivery charges add between $150,000 and $700,000 to the cost of sending potable water that can be purchased near the disaster site for $500.

A further distillation of that statistic – $1 of water purchased in the US would not supply even one person with enough drinking water for one day (including capital cost, transportation, taxes, etc.).  In contrast, $1 spent in-country could provide drinking water to approximately 80 people for one day.

Used clothing is another commodity that is expensive from donor to disposal. Western apparel is culturally inappropriate in many countries and is trashed instead of used. Marketplace problems and disposal costs have compelled many countries, including the Philippines, Cote d’Ivoire, Nigeria, Kenya, Malawi and Yemen, to ban importation of used clothing, including during emergencies.

These examples are snapshots of a bigger reality – that unsolicited material donations are high expense to donors and low or negative value to recipients, while cash donations are low expense to donors and high value to recipients.  The two are not on a continuum; they are opposites.

Unsolicited material donations – including canned food, bottled water and used clothing – are usually more expensive to transport than they are worth.  They clog supply chains, take space needed to stage life-saving relief supplies, and divert relief workers’ time. Managing piles of unsolicited “stuff” adds to the cost of emergency response by forcing changes to distribution plans and requiring disposal at further cost. If released into local markets, these donations can put local merchants out of business, adding economic stress to already fragile conditions.

In stark contrast, besides being the easiest gift for donors to give, monetary contributions to established relief agencies support local merchants and local economies, ensure that commodities are fresh and familiar to survivors, that supplies arrive expeditiously and that goods are culturally, nutritionally and environmentally appropriate. No unsolicited material donation can do as much good as quickly and at such low cost, with so little hassle for donor, recipient and host country.

Most people who contact CIDI understand that cash donations are preferred by relief agencies but have never heard about the harm that unsolicited material donations can do. Fortunately, the easiest donation to give also does the most good.  Cash donations convey more benefits to more people at lower cost and with less hassle – now that’s a bargain!

For more information on effective donations, check out www.cidi.org

British Olympic Bronze medallist and London 2012 gymnastics hopeful Louis Smith has joined the team of UPS London 2012 Olympic Ambassadors, alongside fellow Olympians Ben Ainslie and Denise Lewis, and television sports presenter Steve Rider, to mark the delivery of the 250,000^th item (a 3-meter landing mat) into our London 2012 logistics centres.

To mark the occasion, Louis kindly took some time out of his busy training schedule to visit our Tilbury logistics centre to see first hand the logistical preparation work taking place ahead of the London 2012 Olympic & Paralympic Games.

Louis was a fantastic sport and looked in great shape as he gave our team a quick demonstration of his routine on the pommel horse – his specialty. He also watched on as we took delivery of some 2012 items ready to be sorted and temporarily stored at the centre, a shipment that took us over the quarter-of-a-million item milestone.

Louis’ visit also gave me a chance to speak to him about his own preparations ahead of the London 2012 Games, and it was fascinating to hear about the dedication required to reach peak performance and the weeks and months of preparation required to perfect a gymnastics routine that can last less than two minutes.

In fact, it struck me that we at UPS have a lot in common with athletes like Louis. We know the value of preparation, attention to detail and of the behind-the-scenes hard work that ensures that everything goes smoothly on the big stage.

Like Louis, we are working towards reaching our ‘peak performance’ in time for the London 2012 Games. In the same way that Louis has been using his training to learn and improve, we have been busy testing all the logistics processes and systems related to the London 2012 Games at a series of live sports events.

These events are vital and have helped us gain a clearer understanding of the unique challenges associated with delivering to each of the London 2012 host venues, as well as shipping more unusual items – from BMX starting gates to beach volleyball referee chairs.

I am pleased to say the first cluster of events was completed without a hitch, with another cluster set to begin in October, putting us firmly on track as we prepare to deliver a world-class performance at the London 2012 Games.

How do you keep chiffon shimmering, pleats well placed and crape un-crushed as high-fashion garments are shipped across the globe from the runways of Milan to the racks in the posh shops of Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills? As both fashion designers and retailers know, shipping clothes presents a special challenge. Delicate fabrics can shift, fold, wrinkle and crease inside a box, and intricately constructed garments can lose their shape in transit. UPS looked to industrial design students at the University for Technology Eindhoven (TU/e) in the Netherlands to find a new way to ship haute couture garments sustainably and keep them pristine as they travel from plane to package car through the UPS network.

“We had been speaking about the need for a new, smaller and more sustainable packaging solution with some of our customers in the fashion industry,” said Harld Peters, country manager for UPS Benelux. “TU/e was the right partner for the job. We designed the challenge; they designed the solution.”

Fifteen teams proposed solutions ranging from a cylindrical package in which garments are rolled up to avoid wrinkling to stretching foil over the cloth to keep it from moving around. Four finalist teams were then chosen to present to a jury of experts from UPS and TU/e, as well as editors from fashion magazine Textilia. Each of the final prototypes was also rigorously evaluated at the UPS packaging test laboratory in Neuss, Germany, where they were dropped, thumped, and subjected to the other external conditions that can occur during transport.

Team Gijskoenfrits took home the grand prize: a trip to UPS’s Chicago Area Consolidation Hub and the UPS Package Design & Test Lab in Chicago, Illinois, as well as the possibility of having their concept serve as a basis for market implementation by UPS.

Gijokoenfrits’ solution was a framework of tubes around which hanging garments could be wrapped before sliding into a packing box. The design allows fashion retailers and wholesalers to ship multiple garments per box. The frames are also 100% reusable – meaning that they not only represent a sustainable shipping solution, they’re also perfect for use with UPS Returns service – extremely important when it comes to selling or ordering clothes online.

“Naturally we are very proud we won the competition with our packaging solution,” said Koen de Greef (who puts the Koen in the team name). “After our earlier visit to the UPS air hub in Cologne and our own research we realized that the logistics world is very dynamic and requires great efficiency. For instance, we realized that our concept needed to be adapted to limited storage spaces. Therefore, we implemented a smart folding mechanism to reduce the size of the frames in our prototypes.”

“This project was integrated in our curriculum and seamlessly matched the university’s focus on design and engineering,” said Henri in ‘t Groen, project manager at TU/e. “Also, the cooperation with UPS illustrates the international status of TU/e as a knowledge institute. We are pleased to have had the opportunity to work with UPS and look forward to any project that may follow in the future.”

To find out more about UPS’s engagement with the fashion world, visit UPS à la mode.

From horses to bikes, there is never a dull moment at UPS as preparations continue in the run up to the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

A crucial part of our planning over the coming months has focused on testing the large-scale logistical processes that will be used during the London 2012 Games for the live, nationwide events.  

The latest event to put UPS to the test was the Deloitte Ride Across Britain (RAB), where we facilitated the event’s logistics processes over the course of nine days. Launched in 2010, the RAB offers the opportunity for approximately 600 solo riders and relay teams to raise money for Paralympics GB by cycling the iconic 900 mile route from John O’Groats to Lands End.

Our preparations began before the riders even arrived at John O’Groats with the transportation of riders’ bikes to the start line. But, this was far from the finish for us. In addition to transporting riders’ bikes, we were also tasked with providing logistical support across each of the nine base camps staged at 100-mile intervals along the course, moving more than 1500 crucial pieces of equipment. This included everything from tents, mattresses, bike racks, crowd control barriers and massage beds, to event furniture and branding materials, sports nutrition, non-perishable goods and riders’ bike bags.

This was by no means an easy feat. Beyond serving base camps spread out over considerable distances across the length and breadth of the UK, we also had to incorporate a flexible delivery schedule to accommodate differing rider times. Our teams on the ground had to ensure that both those riders setting off from base camps in the morning, and those faster riders arriving at the next had all the materials and equipment they required. Utilising twelve vehicles from our fleet, we split the operation into several teams, so that as soon as the breakdown of a camp was taking place on one site, UPS teams were already delivering and setting up base camps further down the course.

UPS’s involvement with the Ride Across Britain didn’t end with the logistical support either with  three of our employees, Simon J Rhodes, Dave Woodiwiss and Darren Perry, taking part in the whole race, cycling alongside Olympians, athletes and other participants.

After riding across 900 miles, covering some of the most remote and beautiful terrain in the UK and even a leg of the race where three additional UPS riders joined in support, the race was complete for our intrepid three. But our logistics team’s efforts didn’t end with the end of the race. As 600 riders rode across the finish line, along came the challenge of reuniting riders with their bikes.  The team collected bikes at the finish line and coordinated the safe return and delivery of all bikes to access points across the country.

Looking back, we were able to identify the best of our existing capabilities and how to address the additional challenges brought about by supporting an event of this size and scale. Through this process, we’ve been given a valuable glimpse into what is expected of us next year, and have had the opportunity to further hone our expertise in event logistics ahead of one of the world’s most complex global logistical challenges. It’s really starting to feel as though solid foundations are in place to deliver one of the best Olympic Games yet.