Dateline... UPS Strike's Impact on Lands' End Company, Dodgeville, Wisconsin.

Lands' End is a mail order company that has had an average growth of over 15% for the past 10 years! And, it intends to continue at this percentage growth into the future. They ship from 30,000 to 50,000 packages per day. UPS has been the mail contractor for Lands End, and during the recent UPS strike, the company was faced with the problem of getting orders out to its customers. Kelly Ritche, VP of Human Resources, indicated that the managers, supervisors and employees were able to design and implement a solution which resulted in all packages being delivered with only a minor inconvenience to its customers.

Lands' End normally had eight daily drop points that UPS would pull from to deliver the 30 to 50 thousand packages they shipped all over the world. When UPS went on strike, the company was left without a way to ship to their customers. People at Lands' End went into action and worked with the US Postal Service designing 120 drop points so that priority bulk mail could be used to get the high volume of packages to the customers. Kelly Ritche indicated that employees gave up a great deal of their personal time and gave a lot of extra effort in order to design and implement the bulk mail plan. As a result, all packages were shipped to customers and no packages were left in the "pipeline."

The ability of Lands' End to successfully respond to this kind of challenge is characteristic of a People Process Culture. People working together applying their knowledge and skills achieve more.