Convenience

Types of Control
The examples of control given thus far have illustrated the regulation of several organi-
zational activities, from producing quality products to coordinating complex organiza-
tions. Organizations practice control in a number of different areas, and at different
levels, and the responsibility for managing control is widespread.
428
Part 5:
Controlling
Copyright 2016 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.
www.MyEbookNiche.eCrater.com

---

TOUGH TIMES, TOUGH CHOICES
Engineering Time
Among the reasons for FedEx’s long-term success
are its commitments to customer service and
prompt, accurate delivery. The company’s informa-
tion systems are critical to its ability to keep these
commitments because they support the firm’s
complex operations (including over 90,000 vehicles,
677 airplanes, and 200,000 employees in 220 coun-
tries) and allow it to deliver 6 million packages daily.
“We engineer time,” explains executive vice
president and chief information officer Rob Carter.
“We … allow you to engineer time to make things
happen along time schedules that weren’t possible
[before].” Texas-based Motion Computing, for exam-
ple, outsources assembly to a factory in China, and
FedEx is able to transport a finished PC from the
assembly plant directly to the consumer in about five
days. Why is such speed so important to Motion? “We
have no inventory tied up in the process anywhere,”
says CEO Scott Eckert. “Frankly, our business is
enabled by FedEx.”
FedEx founder and CEO Fred Smith once remarked
that information about a package is as important as the
package itself, and his company has for a long time
been putting this insight into practice by means of an
extensive online tracking system. Recently, the entire
system has been reconfigured so that customers
can stay ahead of deliveries rather than merely keeping
up with them. “[We] took the whole tracking mecha-
nism and turned it around,” reports Carter, “so that as
opposed to having to track a package, you say, ‘I want
to know what’s coming to me today.’ You can go out
there now and see every inbound package, regardless
of whether you knew someone was sending it.”
It’s important to FedEx that it was the first com-
pany in the package-delivery industry to recognize
the strategic value of information systems. Rival
UPS, asserts Carter, still lags behind even though
“it’s easier to copy than it is to innovate.” While
granting that UPS offers many of the same information
services as FedEx, Carter hastens to underscore what
©
iS
tockphoto.com
/w
inhorse
FedEx is one of the world’s most efficient businesses. A commitment to customer service and
prompt, accurate deliveries, combined with continuous improvement in its operating systems has
allowed FedEx to remain a leader in overnight delivery industry.
(
continued
)