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DOUBLE DOUBLE LABELLING LABELLING
nonsense
by John Darker Amb,rn
IT IS EASY to make blanket criticisms of British industry which are of no help—but in one particular sector, of vital interest to road transport, an immediate improvement is called for.
Double-labelling, an expensive nuisance in parcels operations, is persisting alarmingly throughout the country. It has an adverse affect on the rates charged for parcels and smalls because the cost of remedial measures must be borne overall, and the practice slows down the tempo of work not only in transport but in industry as a whole.
Though it is not possible to determine precisely the extent of the practice in relation to the total number of parcels consigned each year in Britain, enough is known about the amount of double-labelling to criticize it forthrightly. Every board of directors and the heads of smaller businesses should from time to time cause check inquiries to be made to stop this practice in dispatch departments.
BRS Parcels Ltd. monitors the doublelabelling hazard periodically and in its last formal exercise—dubbed "Spot the doublelabel fortnight"—nine branches found a total of 812 packages bearing two labels. Edinburgh branch alone collected 148 packages bearing two addresses and Preston was not far behind with 108. By comparison, the large Muswell Hill branch, in London, spotted a mere 31 of its own collected packages but 94 received from other branches.
Old labels Atlas Express Ltd. has also been waging war against double labelling. It has circularized customers to stress that in the first fortnight of its campaign, this spring, 240 packages were noted each bearing two labels on which appeared two different addresses. Of these 240 packages, 11 senders were using secondhand packages on which old delivery labels had not been obliterated or removed, 23 senders had put on two new labels with different addresses, 63 packages bore two apparently new labels each display
ing different sender's and consignee's names and 43 packages bore one label addressed back to sender and another to a consignee. A total of 161 packages could have been wrongly delivered.
The Atlas scheme started on March 18 this year and the details that follow are an analysis of 13 weeks of the exercise. There was full internal publicity before the plan was launched so that the interest of the staff concerned was captured.
Bonus scheme Undoubtedly, a factor in popularizing the scheme was the award of 5s per consignment to platform staff spotting a double label. There is no limit to this special bonus, and sharp-eyed bay enterer Archie Greenhill, who is responsible for checking Liverpool traffic at the Atlas London depot at Bermondsey, has become something of a legend with his mates. Archie has spotted more double-labelled packages than any one else at Bermondsey—and this is the more remarkable in that he is, in effect, a "long stop". Other platform personnel could have got in first.
Atlas is bringing this abuse to the notice of its customers in the most telling fashion— by debitting them with lOs for every such consignment. Nothing is likely to be more salutary, but Mr. J. T. Brown, Atlas director, pointed out: "We don't really want the ten bob, though the double-labelling abuse costs us much more than that for every such consignment. We just want the practice to stop."
The 5s award to staff "primed the pump" with a vengeance. The London depot platform staff within five weeks were spotting on average 229 double-labelled packages and the trend was still rising. On April 19 a letter was sent to every customer drawing attention to the problem. At the same time, control on the loading banks was greatly tightened up.
Despite the letter and the more rigorous platform control the improvement noted was small and some weeks after the campaign began as many as 127 packages bearing double labels were noted. In week 9, when Atlas began to assess the significance of the exercise, it concluded that at least 30 customers were still paying no attention. Overall, the number of "faulty" consignments was beginning to rise. Clearly, the impact of the campaign had to be sharpened up.
A copy of all details of mis-labelled packages was prepared for each offending customer, and an analysis showing the "faulty" consignments to date was posted to the customers at the end of May. The letter informed customers that Atlas proposed to charge lOs for each future dispatch error.
'Penalty payment' results In the following week five letters of apology were received, three letters of refutation and a number of phone calls, almost all of which denied the complaints. In all cases except one the customer was satisfied that the circumstances described were, indeed, genuine. In the one exception, Atlas conceded that its claim might be unjustified since the bank man concerned had been dismissed for dishonesty and his claim form was the only evidence.
Though only five weeks have elapsed since the lOs "penalty paymenthas been levied Atlas feels there is clear evidence that most of the persistent double-labelling customers are now paying considerable attention to their packaging and labelling methods.
The London details were discussed with directors and area managers in March and despite some natural hesitations it was agreed that the scheme should be applied throughout the country. I understand that the results so far have proved encouraging.
Atlas catechism An analysis of the Atlas London exercise showed that in 12 weeks 1,786 consignments had been identified with double labels. Many more than this number may have escaped observation and thus passed into the countrywide depot network. Twelve consignments were actually taken out of wrong dispatch bays, proving how easily a double-labelled package can be sent to Cornwall instead of Newcastle. A sample analysis (12f per cent of total) showed that 65 per cent could have gone to the wrong address, 8 per cent were likely to have been wrongly forwarded and 1 per cent would almost certainly have been wrongly delivered.
The scheme has so far cost Atlas nearly £450 in bonus money alone and at least double this sum if administrative costs are included. The highest bonus paid in any one week was £5 lOs to George Greenaway.
There are, of course, many implications in this exercise for management. Mr. J. T. Brown, whose zealous work for the Vehicle Observer Corps is well known, does not want to over-dramatize the possibility that a pro
portion of the double-labelling is deliberate but he suggests that the practice could be indulged in by a small number of customers for fraud, or a member of a customer's staff could try to send goods to a receiver of stolen property. Certainly, Atlas will not waste its carefully compiled records—they will be correlated with claims files and customers with demonstrably "slap happy" dispatch departments will be made aware of this at the appropriate time.
The Express parcels operators, individually and collectively, issue publicity material to customers at regular intervals to remind them of the need for care in labelling. The Post Office, of course, has the same sort of problem. Customers—and their dispatch staffs—should not need to be told of the importance of commonsense labelling procedures. Alas, the figures I have quoted suggest that many thousands of them do need advice. So, for customers, here is the Atlas Catechism. •
Deface or remove—old labels and markings. Put new labels alongside defaced ones arid not on opposite sides.
Make stencilled, printed or stamped addresses clear.
Chalk, wax pencil and similar markings should be avoided.
Don't use tie-on labels if there is a more secure labelling method.
If attaching a "Description of goods" make sure it is marked; "Sent by" or "From" if your name and address appears an it.
Ensure your name and address is on the parcel or a reference number.
If a non-delivery is reported by a customer of yours, check your Goods Inwards records. It may have come back to you.
Prepare consignment notes from the labelled packages, or compare both afterwards.
Use good and appropriate packaging materials. Endorse numbers in consignment on part-lot labels.
Weigh your parcels accurately.
Perhaps one could add as a tailpiece that the payment of a bonus to platform staff for spotting double labels on packages is not by any means an ideal arrangement.
Platform staff, however their duties are defined, should intercept and query any doubtful consignment as a matter of course. In any parcels organization where this does not happen a lot of unnecessary movement and documentation will be involved, and the total productivity of the whole enterprise— and so the level of profitability from which, alone, bonus incentives derive—must suffer.
Ultimate solution?
But in the present labour relations climate of the industry perhaps my views are old fashioned. I think Atlas is psychologically on target in debitting its careless customers 10s for being—in blunt language—an infernal nuisance. If the exercise, in terms of pure accounting, paid off it would perhaps justify the permanent payment of monetary rewards to sharp-eyed platform staff. But I suspect the real cost to the industry of such careless dispatching is nearer £2 a time. With that level of penalty applied—as I feel it should be—by the country's parcels operators I suspect the number of careless dispatch staffs would rapidly diminish to vanishing point.