Flat Mail: Printers Prepare as USPS Gets More Automated

Printers who provide customers with mail-preparation services need to be tuned into big changes underway within the U.S. Postal Service. While the USPS has employed a strategy of automation to replace high-cost labor for years, technology is allowing an exponential expansion of this strategy.

Since the early 1990s, letter mail has been the focus of applying automation to reduce costs. Early automatic mail processing was aided by letters' reasonably standard construction—size, address placement, etc. Today, Letter Carriers receive the letter mail that they will be delivering in Deliver Point Sequencing.

In other words, the processing equipment sorts all of the letter mail into bundles for each point on the route, in the correct delivery order. This has eliminated the need for the Letter Carrier to sort letter mail, thus saving considerable labor hours.

The challenge has been to apply this to flat mail—i.e., magazines, catalogs and direct mail—with its vast differences in size, configuration, weight, shape and address placement.

First, the USPS designed the Automatic Flat Sorting Machine 100 (AFSM-100) to sort single-piece flat mail at productive rates. After several enhancements, postal engineers applied the same type of technology to sorting bundles of magazine and catalogs, resulting in the design and deployment of the Automatic Package Processing System (APPS).

Enabling technologies such as Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and barcodes are making this all possible. The APPS, while still in the refining stage of implementation, is also helping to reduce labor costs.

So what's next? The Flat Sequencing System (FSS) was successfully tested in prototype last year in Indianapolis, with the next phase planned for testing soon, before mid-year.

This means plenty to printers who provide mail preparation services. Automation is easier to apply and more successful when it is used in an environment of reasonably standard products. Flat mail “products” are becoming “inputs” to the USPS processing equipment.

The current rate case (R-2006-1), which will be implemented in 2007, has many rule changes that will drive mail to become more compatible with automatic processing equipment. Size, weight, flexibility, address accuracy and address placement requirements are either proposed or under consideration.

The impact on mail piece design and preparation places printers who mail in a position where the knowledge of these changes will be critical. New requirements could have implications for equipment, training and procedures.

One of the best ways to learn about these is by attending the National Postal Forum next month. The NPF sessions on March 27 are designed for print professionals, created and presented “by printers, for printers.”