Royal Mail strike: 'Chaos on the cards' as ballot for strike action announced

[SpacePhoenix]

We had numerous days when we had NO manager, for whatever reason, only the locker person "in charge" but the work all got delivered. No one monitoring yellow dot stops etc, it just shows that if you leave the foot soldiers alone without interference the job will get done!

I doubt that a human is involved with monitoring the yellow dots. More likely a computer will be monitoring the data and flagging the relevant ones up to the relevant managers

Oh yes there is, what do you think Lino's do after we've gone out when they've finished shopping and playing pool ?

RM is missing a trick by not sending the linos out on delivery. How many linos actually stay once everyone has gone out on delivery? My gut feeling is that most will go home once they've finished their paperwork

[Woody Guthrie]

The PDA data is not live tracked by anyone or anything, it would take a huge amount of expensive computing power and would be mostly useless.

The data is simply stored and called upon where an issue is flagged up.

Can easily be processed overnight. Ever heard of cloud computing?

That's not live tracking and cloud computing capability on that scale is very expensive but the real issue is why would you attempt to collate and inspect all that data.
It's pretty useless on a large scale since you have no idea what all these yellow dots actually relate to.

It's only useful on an individual basis if there is a disagreement over the length of a particular delivery. Then at least you can see and discuss where there may be inefficiencies or lack of balance between the loops, otherwise it's pretty meaningless data.

[clashcityrocker]

RM is missing a trick by not sending the linos out on delivery. How many linos actually stay once everyone has gone out on delivery? My gut feeling is that most will go home once they've finished their paperwork

There are no line managers.
Your gut feeling is way off the mark.

[claretandblue]

Managers used to be responsible for any mail left, they regularly would deliver mail that was left, not anymore though.

[Woody Guthrie]

Managers used to be responsible for any mail left...

The truth is they never really were it's just they would rather deliver it themselves than face the ultimate humiliation of being singled out on the conference call with the DSM and they were too spineless to stand up to some of the piss taking members.

There is no conference call now so they just fail it or hide it.

[SpacePhoenix]

That's not live tracking and cloud computing capability on that scale is very expensive

Chances are that cloud computing would be overkill for analysing the data overnight. The computers behind an iLSM are the size of a large gaming PC. It be just a case of running the SQL queries

[Woody Guthrie]

That's not live tracking and cloud computing capability on that scale is very expensive

Chances are that cloud computing would be overkill for analysing the data overnight. The computers behind an iLSM are the size of a large gaming PC. It be just a case of running the SQL queries

You're talking about analysing the data from 25 million delivery points involving 10s of thousands of delivery routes around the country, not programming an iLSM and do you even know what SQL queries are?

But as I've pointed out the main issue is that it would be utterly pointless unless you also knew exactly why the yellow dots were there.

[SpacePhoenix]

You're talking about analysing the data from 25 million delivery points involving 10s of thousands of delivery routes around the country, not programming an iLSM and do you even know what SQL queries are?

Yes I know what SQL is, don't think you have any understanding of developing applications

But as I've pointed out the main issue is that it would be utterly pointless unless you also knew exactly why the yellow dots were there.

It would flag up a list for each COM of ones they need to ask the posties about

[jessicarabbit]

On a day recently when we failed 2 deliveries the COM got a phone call that afternoon to explain how we had failed 2 but all the yellow dots in the office added up to enough time to deliver the 2 deliveries and also the number of PDAs that had logged off before their finish times. It may not be accessible in real time but they can access as much info as they need from PDA actuals pretty soon after deliveries are back to put alot of pressure on managers going forward. And we all know that when they start to feel the pressure they will push it down on to us. Be assured if you think you can carry on making time in this job those days are numbered.

[Woody Guthrie]

It would flag up a list for each COM of ones they need to ask the posties about

Which ones would that be?
Every duty will produce yellow dots every day that are sub optimal for various reasons from unbalanced loops to unbalanced D2D and unbalanced parcels, PDA issues, customer issues, vehicle issues, walking conditions and of course different levels of performance.

What exactly could you do with this yellow dot data?

I've been through PDA data with various levels of management and while it can be useful if you also have the information from the duty holder on its own it is completely useless so the manager would have to interview practically every duty holder every day to make any kind of sense from it.

but all the yellow dots in the office added up to enough time to deliver the 2 deliveries

It's that kind of lack of understanding by management of what the data can and can't tell you that I'm talking about. Yellow dots are not down time, they're a necessary part of the delivery process. You would need to dive much further into the data to understand where there would be any scope for improving efficiency and nobody has the time or the money to deep dive the data on a daily basis.

[SpacePhoenix]

It's that kind of lack of understanding by management of what the data can and can't tell you that I'm talking about. Yellow dots are not down time, they're a necessary part of the delivery process. You would need to dive much further into the data to understand where there would be any scope for improving efficiency and nobody has the time or the money to deep dive the data on a daily basis.

Not impossible to do, just needs the right hardware and software set up to crunch the numbers

[Woody Guthrie]

It's that kind of lack of understanding by management of what the data can and can't tell you that I'm talking about. Yellow dots are not down time, they're a necessary part of the delivery process. You would need to dive much further into the data to understand where there would be any scope for improving efficiency and nobody has the time or the money to deep dive the data on a daily basis.

Not impossible to do, just needs the right hardware and software set up to crunch the numbers

You're not getting it.
There's no hardware, software or algorithm that will tell you why a yellow dot is there, for that you would need to interview the duty holder and that would mean almost every duty holder every day because every duty produces sub optimal yellow dots every day.

[Woody Guthrie]

The bottom line is delivery is nothing like processing, you can't science the s**t out of it.

There are too many variables when you're out in the real world.

[paulus103]

I'm assuming us staff wouldn't be working as no Person In Charge (PIC)?

[SpacePhoenix]

The bottom line is delivery is nothing like processing, you can't science the s**t out of it.

There are too many variables when you're out in the real world.

How am I trying to "science the s**t" out of it.

These days all firms are always analysing data for their respective operations to see what savings they can make

You do come out with some bullshit

You're not getting it.
There's no hardware, software or algorithm that will tell you why a yellow dot is there, for that you would need to interview the duty holder and that would mean almost every duty holder every day because every duty produces sub optimal yellow dots every day.

That's why I already said it would generate a list that the COM would use to find out why. They'll be able to see the actual locations so they'll be able to see if it's things like traffic lights, roadworks, etc