An integrated system for mail coding services: Elsag Datamat works with Poste Italiane

An insight from Paolo Sardoni, operations director engineering, Post Italiane, & Stefano Solari, postal platform ICT architect, Elsag Datamat, for Mail & Express Review – Post&Parcel’s sister publication. The Integrated System for Coding Services (SISC) is a fully modular and scalable IT platform for mail item address coding and mail processing that has been developed and evolved by Elsag Datamat since 2001.

SISC has recently been  deployed in its full functional configuration at  each Automation Centre of Poste Italiane, connecting more than one hundred sorting machines at some twenty five sorting sites with thirty remote Video Coding Centres (VCS) and a Central Administration site. This has led to the implementation of a fully scalable network of mail processing services.

SISC functional layers

The functional architecture of SISC divides into three different layers:

the automation layer performs all image processing functions such as address and indicia recognition, mail piece identification and on line sorting decision management;

the data capture and supervision layer carries out mail attributes and events gathering and storage, as well as supervision and operational control of basic and advanced coding and sorting operations; and

the central administration layer performs overall network coding and sorting process monitoring and configuration and management of the underlying layers and IT system infrastructure.

Managing recognition services

SISC supports all coding activities for both tagged and non-tagged mail pieces: letters, flats or small parcels.

Mail item identification can be generated internally by physical tagging by machines but can be also based on pre-existing indicia on mail flows. SISC can manage mixed identification scenarios in the same machine operating environment.

The system can generally integrate a vast range of mail piece image processing services and functions as required to meet specific customer needs such as on line primary OCR address resolution; on line and  offline OCR co-processing; on and offline and remote video coding; deferred VCS for tagged mail; and non-address information / indicia capture to manage special flows.

When all address and non-address information has been resolved, SISC drives each acquired mail item throughout its entire lifecycle up to the final destination in the sorting chain.

Home based video coding offers posts positive impacts on absenteeism and  on the individual’s carbon footprint. From an employee’s point of view, it provides the capability to work flexibly; for the company it can cover  production critical time windows such as shift changes and night shifts.

Poste Italiane now has available an extension of SISC which supports such an organisational scenario. The solution simply requires the availability of internet connectivity between SISC Datacentres within Poste Italiane and the keying operators’ home PCs. It also offers communication capabilities between teleworkers and supervisors, providing access to training, support information and keying session reporting.

Capturing mail objects as business events

To support value added services and to give full control and visibility of address coding and sorting decision processes, SISC has been enriched with data interfaces that capture:

-machine events regarding mail processing sessions ;

-mail item OCR and VCS coding events;

-sorting decision events; and

-mail aggregation events which provide the capability to link each single mail item identifier to its mail tray identifier.

Configuring and administering the process

All SISC production sites are designed to interface at Central Administration level. This allows full manageability and configurability of the overall coding and mail flow management process.

The SISC solution embraces a suite of administration and control tools for:

-sorting and sequencing strategy definition. A sorting strategy can allow machine outlet assignments based not only on address resolution, but also on many non-address data elements such as indicia detection, bar code information content, and revenue protection;

-coding depth strategy definition for each plant and for the end to end process;

-central configuration of image flow management, results flow management and migration support data;

-on line VCS task central scheduling for automatic workload balancing and cutoff times for image queues served by all operational video coding centres in the network;

-medium term planning of VCS demand and resources; and

-central monitoring and management of the system’s hardware and software infrastructure.

Value added services

SISC manages mail items throughout their lifecycle from initial data capture to final destination delivery. This involves close coupling between physical mail processes and the dynamics of business logic rules.

Examples include revenue protection, reply mail, return to sender management and sender customer ID identification.  Other functionalities include registered mail identification and tracking, address services detection such as logos and barcodes and recipient identification.

Interfacing with other systems and the it environment

SISC can manage multiple external interfaces with many types of proprietary and non-proprietary information systems: process oriented data interfaces such as production monitoring, address and organisational data management systems as well as other systems providing business services including mail acceptance management and delivery support.

It can also be integrated with all IT system management solutions available on the market.

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