“A lot of times, I feel like an explorer,” says Jack Levis, UPS’s director of process management. “Often I’m telling the company: Just because we’ve done it this way for the past 50 years doesn’t mean it’s right.” Levis, who manages a team of mathematicians who build the algorithms that help UPS shave millions of miles off delivery routes, is paid to tell the company things it may not want to hear. One of his major projects in the last decade has been rolling out a system called ORION (On-Road Integrated Optimization and Navigation), a kind of algorithmic overmind that knows better than any human how drivers ought to plan their routes. ORION was first conceived in 2000, but wasn’t tested till 2008. Over the past four years, the system has rolled out to some 50 UPS buildings; it will take another half-decade or so to roll out the system throughout UPS. “It’s one driver at a time, one building at a time,” says Levis.
UPS Drivers vs Algorithms & The Traveling Salesman Problem
on 1.4.13
Author: Shelly Palmer
Shelly Palmer is Fox 5 New York's On-air Tech Expert (WNYW-TV) and the host of Fox Television's monthly show Shelly Palmer Digital Living. He also hosts United Stations Radio Network's, Shelly Palmer Digital Living Daily, a daily syndicated radio report that features insightful commentary and a unique insiders take on the biggest stories in technology, media, and entertainment. He is Managing Director of Advanced Media Ventures Group, LLC an industry-leading advisory and business development firm and a member of the Executive Committee of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (the organization that bestows the coveted Emmy® Awards).
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