thoughtleaders
BY MARK B. SOLOMON, SENIOR EDITOR
Delivering the Olympics
INTERVIEW WITH
CINDY MILLER
The largest peacetime logistics
effort in history will reach
a crescendo July 27 when
the Olympic flame is lit in
London. It’s Cindy Miller’s job
to make sure UPS delivers
everything precisely when and
where it’s needed—and then
get it all back out again.
28
DC VELOCITY JUNE 2012
MOST PEOPLE OUTSIDE THE TENNIS INDUSTRY HAVE NEVER SEEN
26,400 tennis balls in one place at one time.
And unless you’re in the table tennis business, chances are you’ve never
come across 4,283 Ping-Pong balls resting in a warehouse.
Cindy Miller knows these numbers by heart.
Miller, 49, runs UPS Inc.’s operations in the U.K., Ireland, and the four
Nordic countries. Since October 2010, when she assumed her current role,
she has also headed what is believed to be the largest civilian logistics initiative the world has ever seen: UPS’s three-year effort to equip the London
Olympic Games from July 27 through Aug. 12, and the Paralympics Games
to follow in September, with everything they need in order to function.
By the time the games begin, Atlanta-based UPS will have handled 30 million items of endless variety from myriad origin points to 172 venues in and
around London. By contrast, UPS handled between 18 million and 19 million items for the 2008 games in Beijing. The smaller volume in 2008 was
partly due to the fact that other companies, as well as the Chinese military,
were tasked with moving goods.
UPS won the London bid in September 2009 with an ambitious proposal
