Can Letter Processing Get Even Better?
Filed under Mail Processing & Transportation
Tags: First-Class Mail, postal service, presort, processing and distribution, volume
Recent Government Accountability Office testimony to Congress stated processing capacity for First-Class Mail exceeds processing needs by 50 percent, and analysis by industry experts indicates an additional drop of 35 billion pieces in First-Class Mail by 2020. With mail volume declining, does this provide an opportunity for the Postal Service to capture savings by adopting industry best practices in its First-Class Mail processing operations?
The OIG benchmarked operations at Postal Service processing and distribution centers with commercial presort mailers to identify best practices in First-Class Mail processing. Presort mailers combine mail from multiple businesses into larger mailings that are then sorted to geographic area, and receive reduced postage prices when the mailings are tendered to the Postal Service.
Loading ...Large commercial presort mailers use comparable processing equipment and similar processing operations as the Postal Service. In fact, several of these mailers are publicly-traded companies with thousands of employees who are located in multiple geographic areas. Although the Postal Service is a leader in letter processing, it could improve its operations by adopting some of the “best practices” used by presort mailers, including:
• Assessing and streamlining their network in a more timely manner based solely on the business case.
• Relying on a flexible workforce (volumes drive employee work hours, and employees cross crafts).
• Using automated or mechanized tray systems consistently to reduce the need for manual operations.
What other practices can you suggest to help the Postal Service with First-Class Mail processing, even as volumes decline?
This topic is hosted by the Office of Audit Network Optimization team.
14 Responses to “Can Letter Processing Get Even Better?”
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June 17th, 2010 at 5:40 pm
Surely the drop in mail numbers must result in a much more efficient service?
I certainly agree that they should concentrate on providing a better quality first class mail service but also standard mail too.
June 1st, 2010 at 10:13 am
Process Logic: The Presort function reduces some of the first sortation functions which the USPS plants perform. Equipment and operations have been reduced in this area over the years. But, the Presorters can not perform the final DPS function. This is where the majority of labor is saved in the delivery function. The DPS process can only occur when you have “all” the mail. Hence, only the USPS can perform this function.
May 27th, 2010 at 8:40 am
the post office machines would have plenty of mail if you would stop Presort mailers combining mail from multiple businesses into larger mailings that are then sorted at private mailing houses.The post office could improve the efficiency of first class mail by eliminating or reducing the excess subsidies to presort houses that create postal inefficiencies
May 23rd, 2010 at 12:09 am
The Postal services target of SDO to craft is 1 to 25 and SDO &MDO to craft ratio of 1 to 22. I believe this is still to high. To many cooks in the kitchen bump into each other. Inefficiencies are created when there is a lack of communication between the management employees on how things are to be done. Fro example a group of employees are told by one SDO to do one thing in an operation and 10 minutes later a different SDO is taking employees out of the section to do something else they they need to be done. Now the first SDO is unaware that the work that he is counting to be done is not going to be accomplished in time, due to lack of employees in his section. Some times the second SDO doesn’t seem to care as long as their section is closed out in time. We are in the communication business but we seem to have a issue with communication amongst ourselves. The other question seem to be why do we process the least profitable mail with the highest labor costs?
For example First class mail has to be cleared daily and we process it during straight time hours. But BBM is proceed at time using overtime. We need to become more efficient in processing the BBM. Due to the decline of mail volume we should not have an issue in solving this issue if management practices time management. Also if we want to know how to process more efficiently talk to the people that do the job. Listen to them and their ideas. One of the weaknesses of the Postal Service is that we have people making decisions about thing they have never done. Walking across the floor is not enough. Shur charts and graphs are nice but unless you have done the job or listen to the person who runs the machine, loads the trucks and Dispatches the mail how can we really know what is going on and how the system can be improved.