to be both games’ sole logistics service provider. Unlike the
2008 Beijing games, where the Chinese government essentially ran the logistics operations, London Olympic organizers made UPS a partner and effectively gave it free rein.
At this writing, most of the goods are being staged in two
London warehouses that together occupy 850,000 square
feet of space. The next step, Miller said, is to begin positioning the items for delivery to their respective locations.
Miller, a Pennsylvania native and 24-year UPS veteran,
spoke in mid-May with Senior Editor Mark B. Solomon
about the pressures of her dual role (yes, Virginia, Big
Brown’s regular business still goes on) and the even tougher
logistical challenge that still lies ahead.
Until October and November of last year, I felt reasonably
certain I had the time [for both]. But in January of this year,
it felt like someone flipped a switch. It certainly feels like I’ve
got a lot of irons in the fire at the moment. The time management piece has been a personal learning curve for me.
QOther than the volume of the items handled, how is this a larger undertaking than the Beijing games?
AIn 2008, from a Chinese perspective, it was the gov- ernment’s engagement. We’ve been more embedded
in the LOCOG (London Organising
Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic
Games) organization. It is much more of a
joint partnership.
We had approached LOCOG with the
idea that we would be the only company to
handle everything from point A to point B.
They liked the idea of one company working as a partner doing that.
QCan it be assumed the bulk of your work is done once the games begin?
AWe secured the bid in September 2009 and from that point, there have been
months and months of buildup. Our next biggest peak, the
next round of sleepless nights, will come once the
Paralympics are over (on Sept. 9), and most of the 30 million items that we brought into London will have about a
three-month window to reverse themselves. We have about
that amount of time to return the items to their origin point
or to the next location. So what we had about 18 months to
build up for, we have about three months to reverse. That is
every bit as challenging as the buildup, if not more so.
QGoing in, what did you expect to be the biggest chal- lenge, and has it turned out that way?
AWhat keeps me up at night has evolved as we’ve gone along. Initially, after we secured the bid and got up
and running, it was making sure that we had the appropriate plans and that we weren’t missing anything. Now, as we
have gotten closer, the challenge is to realize the uniqueness
of this supply chain. That we have set it up for a one-time
event and then it gets disassembled, to never be run again
unless London wins the Olympics again.
One of the key things to understand is that we don’t have
a chance to not get it right. When you enter an emerging
market or introduce a product, you have
the opportunity to test some things, to
tweak different aspects, and generally have
the chance to improve it.
Here, [we have] one opportunity, and
everything has to be perfect. If a judge shows
up at a swimming event and the chairs aren’t
where they should be, or the whistles aren’t
where they should be, or the clocks aren’t
where they should be, you can’t do it over
again. There is no tomorrow.
QA larger issue facing everybody, not just UPS, will be simply getting
around a metropolis whose populace will swell by 10 percent during the Olympic period. How will you manage that?
AWe think about that all the time on many levels. It comes down to issues of business continuity. People
who don’t have anything to do with the Olympics will want
pickups at their businesses or pickups at their homes. The
city of London has put its best foot forward to work with
companies like UPS and to listen to our suggestions of joint
solutions to mitigate and minimize the congestion.
QHave the Olympic preparations consumed virtually all of your time?
AI essentially have two work streams. We have this mas- sive Olympics endeavor, but side by side, we have this
strong and healthy business that has nothing to do with the
Olympics.
QDoes your model project a significant dropoff in reg- ular commercial business during this period?
AInitially, we thought that the mindset might be, “OK, the congestion is coming, this is going to be my time to take
holiday.” And August is a great holiday month for Europe anyway. But we’ve found the converse is happening. Small, mid-
