The Logistics Institute of the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech conducts a 'fun' experiment each year, where they send out identical packages to different couriers to a particular destination.
This year, they used FedEx, UPS and DHL to deliver identical packages to 4 locations:
1. Ouadadougou, in Burkina Faso
2. Split, in Croatia
3. Surabaya, in Indonesia
4. Punta Arenas, in Chile
Needless to say, the goal is to find out which courier service is able to deliver the packages to its intended destination in the shortest time, which in Industrial Engineering terms, is a measure of how their logistics & freight network infrastructures are set up. So far, DHL seems to be in the lead. You can track the race by clicking here.
In 2003, the sole destination was Singapore, in which UPS and FedEx tied (the story being quite hilarious, where both the FedEx and the UPS man was infront of the door at the same time, the FedEx guy got to open the door first, but the UPS man got the signature first, hence a tie) and in 2004, FedEx was the clear winner. Somehow there wasn't a race in 2005.
Am I the only one (apart from the people in The Logistics Institute) who finds this amazingly interesting? Or am I just a geeky Industrial Engineer in training?
:: UPDATE ::
UPS is in the lead, by winning 2 of the 4 races, beating DHL to Split, Croatia by 3 minutes after first delivery attempt was unanswered. However, they had some major problems with 2 of the other destinations.
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