- Joined
- Nov 23, 2014
- Messages
- 2,606
Not limited to UPS, it's pretty much all services since, as Erik mentioned, Covid has upset the infrastructure of everything. Who would have thought a new strain of the common cold virus would cause people to empty shelves of toilet paper. People were complaining about Proctor & Gamble because Clorox wipes were disappearing from store shelves. WHY DON'T THEY JUST MAKE MORE?!? It's not that easy.
As we are all aware, manufacturing something requires tooling for the most part. I was the development engineer back in the day for the 1995 Pontiac Sunfire instrument panel. We were given a production target of somewhere around 120,000 units a year. That boiled down to around 500 units a day tops. The mold for the instrument panel was around $700,000. Typical large injection molds were run at a cycle time of around 1 minute per part at that time. That means one tool/cavity could produce 60 parts per hour or 480 parts in an 8-hour shift. However, the injection molding machine that that die ran in didn't just run that part. The molding machine was around $3,000,000, so it was scheduled to run other parts too. Not so easy to say, "oh, let's start making 1000 parts per day" when you have a volume forecast of half that. Not so easy to make another $700,000 die that takes around 8 months to cut and tune for a quick fluctuation in the market.
I think the same thing has happened to the shipping industry (and others). They're just getting overwhelmed with volume and with a number of "stay at home" orders in effect. Just not enough hard-working people to get everything done.
Below is my shipping notification for a 3-day large flat rate box for a 5C collet chuck for a Tormach 4th axis. I did a buy it now on the auction on Friday, May 15. Seller shipped it on Monday, May 18. Made it to Indianapolis in 2 days, only 240 miles from our house. Tracking said it departed Indy just 2 minutes after arriving in Indy on May 20. Then on May 24 there was an update that it was in transit. Next update was just about 2 weeks later that it arrived in Lansing, MI about 20 miles away. Was on our porch the next day. The box was pristine, no label damage, so figured it was just the shear volume and lack of folks being at work.
I wasn't upset (although was anxious that it was lost forever) as in the grand scheme of things I had PLENTY of other stuff to do without the 5C collet chuck. I really feel for folks with kids in school as around here there are rumors of staggered schedules to limit the number of kids in the building. A lot of families are dual-income, gonna be tough for them to manage stay-at-home kids 2 or 3 days a week.
Bruce
As we are all aware, manufacturing something requires tooling for the most part. I was the development engineer back in the day for the 1995 Pontiac Sunfire instrument panel. We were given a production target of somewhere around 120,000 units a year. That boiled down to around 500 units a day tops. The mold for the instrument panel was around $700,000. Typical large injection molds were run at a cycle time of around 1 minute per part at that time. That means one tool/cavity could produce 60 parts per hour or 480 parts in an 8-hour shift. However, the injection molding machine that that die ran in didn't just run that part. The molding machine was around $3,000,000, so it was scheduled to run other parts too. Not so easy to say, "oh, let's start making 1000 parts per day" when you have a volume forecast of half that. Not so easy to make another $700,000 die that takes around 8 months to cut and tune for a quick fluctuation in the market.
I think the same thing has happened to the shipping industry (and others). They're just getting overwhelmed with volume and with a number of "stay at home" orders in effect. Just not enough hard-working people to get everything done.
Below is my shipping notification for a 3-day large flat rate box for a 5C collet chuck for a Tormach 4th axis. I did a buy it now on the auction on Friday, May 15. Seller shipped it on Monday, May 18. Made it to Indianapolis in 2 days, only 240 miles from our house. Tracking said it departed Indy just 2 minutes after arriving in Indy on May 20. Then on May 24 there was an update that it was in transit. Next update was just about 2 weeks later that it arrived in Lansing, MI about 20 miles away. Was on our porch the next day. The box was pristine, no label damage, so figured it was just the shear volume and lack of folks being at work.
I wasn't upset (although was anxious that it was lost forever) as in the grand scheme of things I had PLENTY of other stuff to do without the 5C collet chuck. I really feel for folks with kids in school as around here there are rumors of staggered schedules to limit the number of kids in the building. A lot of families are dual-income, gonna be tough for them to manage stay-at-home kids 2 or 3 days a week.
Bruce
