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UPS Integrad™ Driver Training Facility Opens in Cologne

NEUSS/COLOGNE, May 30, 2016 – Today UPS (NYSE: UPS) ceremonially opened Europe’s first UPS Integrad™,a next generation driver training facility, in Cologne, Germany. The facility will train UPS drivers to hone their skills in safety, customer service and efficiency.  Frank Sportolari, president of UPS Germany, and Hermann Gröhe, Germany’s Federal Minister of Health, were on hand to inaugurate and tour the site. 

The new UPS Integrad facility will prepare UPS drivers to serve customers safely and efficiently, by using a ‘teach me, show me, let me’ approach. Drivers will learn the UPS driving and service methods, will be shown how the methods work, and will then practice them in a realistic, hands-on fashion. UPS Integrad training uses a mixture of 3-D computer simulations, webcast learning modules, and traditional classroom instruction to complement activity in a controlled environment in order to reinforce safety, delivery and customer service training. 

“UPS customers expect superior service from their driver,” said Frank Sportolari, president of UPS Germany. “UPS Integrad teaches drivers safe, efficient work methods that are designed to enhance that service.”

One of the training site’s notable features is an outside course designed to mimic a small town called “Neustadt”, with real streets, traffic signs, sidewalks and simulated businesses as well as home delivery and collection points, providing drivers with realistic situations they would encounter in their daily activity. These include safe driving and parcel handling procedures, alternating delivery scenarios and attention to detail. UPS’s integrated delivery network requires a single driver to handle all types of packages – air, ground, domestic, international, commercial, and residential.

Separate classes focus on ‘training-the-trainer’ for driver supervisors so that they can instruct the drivers at regular intervals in their local UPS centers. Supervisors are shown how to guide and teach their employees, and impart the necessary skills.

Both new as well as experienced UPS drivers in Germany will receive UPS Integrad training and this facility will also be the training ground for UPS drivers from other European countries. UPS Integrad teaches the same methods used by UPS Circle of Honor members – an elite group of more than 8,700 active UPS drivers who have driven without experiencing an avoidable accident for 25 years or more. 

“With UPS Integrad we are building on an ongoing commitment to bring UPS drivers the very best training available and developing them into tomorrow’s Circle of Honor members,” Sportolari said.

UPS Integrad was conceived in 2005 when UPS was awarded a USD1.8 million grant from the U.S. Department of Labor to study how young people learn in an increasingly digital world. Incorporating the results from that study, UPS collaborated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Virginia Tech and the Institute for the Future to build a next generation training facility, the first of which opened in 2007 in Landover, Maryland.

To date, more than 7,500 drivers and over 1,500 driver supervisors have completed UPS Integrad training at the seven existing U.S. training locations.