[PLUG-TALK] Toshiba Repair Facility

[Rich Shepard]

   If you're interested at all in the subject of global logistics, this week's
issue of The Economist has a fascinating report on supply chains. A wonderful
read. But, what I specifically wanted to tell you is that UPS has set up a
drop-off service for broken Toshiba laptops at their local branches.

   When Toshiba authorizes the repair, and the owner puts the laptop into a
UPS box and drops it off, it does not go to Japan to be fixed. Instead, when
it gets to UPS's Louisville, KY hub (where 300,000 packages per hour are
moved, and the number of computer transactions each half-hour exceeds the
daily trading transactions of the NY Stock Exchange), it is taken to a large
set of warehouses near the airport and "mended in a repair shop owned and run
not by Toshiba but by UPS. The UPS technicians are trained by Toshiba and the
warehouse holds Toshiba spare parts. Even the people in the Toshiba call
center that deal with inquires work for UPS."

   Wow! That's a far cry from the local package delivery service started in
Seattle about 100 years ago.

Rich

-- 
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.               |    The Environmental Permitting
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc.(TM)    |            Accelerator
<http://www.appl-ecosys.com>     Voice: 503-667-4517      Fax: 503-667-8863