This brief introduction to moving the mail is focused primarily on the canceling and processing of collection mail. The process of sorting the mail that is processed for your daily delivery is only half as involved. This is because it has already been through the following process, either in our facility or a different one located somewhere else in the United States. All facilities work basically the same with the processing of raw uncanceled mail being done in the early evening and then further sorting/trucking operations being performed on the overnight shift. We currently have nearly identical processing and sorting capabilities as that of Indianapolis (speaking of letter mail). It is also a fact that nearly half of the 474 zip code mail NEVER needs to leave the 474 area.
In our case, mail is collected from the 48 separate 474 zip codes that are serviced by the
Mail Processing Annex (MPA) located in Bloomington Indiana. It is brought to the
MPA by trucks and postal vehicles during the afternoon hours for processing on
what we call "Tour 3". The name Tour 3 (T3) is a holdover from the military
influenced management style (tour of duty) that was in place before the
reorganization in the '70's - as is Tour 1 (midnight shift) and Tour 2 (day
shift). Tour 3 is responsible for the induction of all raw (not processed) local
(474) and outgoing (non 474) mail. The mail is first unloaded by "mail handlers"
and the process of sorting begins. Letters, flats (large envelopes/magazine
size) parcels, Priority and Express mail pieces are segregated into the
appropriate containers to allow for their processing. The letter mail is our
concern in this discussion, so the following pertains only to it. Raw letters are moved inside the building from the dock and are placed onto a conveyor.
This conveyor is used to feed the first piece of automated equipment that we use
to help your letter on it's journey.
Very little mail is sorted by hand in
today's Post Office, automation is the key.
The Advanced Facer Canceler System/Input Sub-System (AFCS/ISS or AFCS) is the
first piece of automated equipment to take a look at your letter. It is the real
workhorse of automated postal letter sorting operations, there are a lot of things
going on here so try to keep up!
The first duty this machine performs is "indicia
detection". Plain and simple this means we are looking to see if you put postage
onto your letter. Be it a stamp, meter, postal applied indicia, internet applied
indicia or FIM (facing identification mark - usually found on the return
envelopes provided by your bill providers), every letter needs indicia. The next
step is the cancellation of your postage. We like you... but we don't want you
using your stamp more than once - it's against the law. We apply our "killer
bars" to make your stamp unusable ever again. Next in line is the
application of the ID tag onto the back of your mail piece. This orange barcode
allows us to track your letter through our system and assists in sortation.
Every letter has a unique ID tag. Around the next corner we come to the really
exciting part, "Image Lift"! Essentially we are taking a picture of every piece
of mail to allow us to analyze the address and then determine the very important
"Postnet Code". The Postnet code is the black bars applied to the front of your
mail piece, better known as a "barcode". This is achieved through a four really
smart computer software applications. The first is the Remote Computer Reader or
RCR that is located in our facility. We send the picture (image) we took of your
letter over to RCR and let it decide if a correct Postnet code can be determined
the for the mail piece. We also send it to the Ocular Character Recognition
(OCR) component of the AFCS. Through these two processes we can determine the
Postnet code and make a determination if the mail is local (474) or outgoing
(not 474). In the case that we cannot make a good "recognition" of your letter,
we send the image (not the letter) off to Indy for additional processing. If
they have trouble reading the address they will in turn send the image (not the
letter) off to the Remote Encoding Center (REC site) in Witchita, Kansas for
recognition. After recognition is completed by one/more of the afore mentioned
methods, the data is stored in the Decision Storage Unit (DSU) in Indianapolis.
The DSU is a computer that is designated to house all the image data and ID tags
that we just acquired. We use this information to sort your letter on this
machine and to better prepare it for the additional pieces of automated
equipment.
The AFCS has a throughput of nearly 36,000 pieces/hour.
So far we have accomplished sorting the letters into pre-barcoded, local and
outgoing bins, and have determined or hopefully will very soon, a valid
Postnet code for your letter.
If your letter was already pre-barcoded (usually FIM mail) when you mailed it
we didn't do any of the fancy recognition procedure stated above. Your mailer
did all the work for us so we don't have to. This Postnet code (aka barcode) is
really the heart of all postal automation. Without it, all of our automated
machines and techniques are useless. We work extremely hard to apply this
Postnet and sometimes provide mailers with a discount if they pre-barcode their
mail.
Now that we have the mail sorted into pre-barcoded, local and outgoing we
must spilt the journey of your letter into two avenues that can occur on the same machine, depending on what "mode" it is operated in..
Pre-barcoded mail goes directly to a "Delivery Bar Code Sorter (DBCS)".
The local and outgoing mail ( non pre-barcoded) makes the trip across the workroom floor on racks
to the next step in the journey of your letter. Here it is introduced to the
"Delivery Bar Cose Sorter/Output Sub-System" or, as we refer to it, the DBCS/OSS. The DBCS/OSS is
actually one machine (DBCS) with two modes. It is designed to read the ID tag applied on the back of your letter by the AFCS,
contact the DSU (a computer located in Indy) via a high speed network connection, to see if we have a good Postnet code
determined for this letter and then spray the Postnet code onto the front of the
mail piece. As stated above, it also has the capability to read the pre-applied barcode located on your envelopes that you mail (FIM mail). These barcodes help us to sort your letter to a "finer depth of sort" (break
it down into zip code areas) and help it on it's way. By using RCR, OCR
and REC sites data stored in the DSU, we will be able to determine a valid
Postnet code for over 95% of the mail we process on this piece of equipment.
Outgoing (non 474) mail is dispatched to Indy for sortation/transportation and
local (474) mail is sent to one of our DBCS in house for further sortation on the overnight shift (T1). The
remainder of the mail, less than 5% (no-reads) will be sent to a manual operation to be sorted
by clerks into letter cases and later dispatch to the appropriate areas.
The DBCS/OSS can process over 39,500 pieces/hour.
The AFCS and the DBCS/OSS are very valuable machines to the USPS. The DBCS has more bins than
any other machine to allow for a finer depth of sort. It can effectively sort
the mail in what we call "delivery point sequence." This means that if 10 people
(or any number) live on the same street this machine can sort their mail so that
when the carrier receives this mail and goes out to deliver it the addresses are
in the correct order! All the mail for customer #1 is followed by the mail for
customer #2 and so forth.
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