Lockheed to Update Parcel-Sorting System for USPS

Lockheed Martin Corp. won a USD17.4 million contract to improve automated parcel-sorting systems at the U.S. Postal Service’s bulk mail centers.
The Bethesda contractor will install optical character-recognition systems on secondary parcel-sorting systems — known as Singulation Scan Induction Units — at 19 bulk mail centers across the nation. Each of these mail-processing plants has two sorting machines that will be outfitted with the optical systems.
About 5,000 pieces move through each of the systems every hour, said Thomas Moberg, Lockheed Martin’s program manager for Postal Service contract work.
Optical character-recognition technology uses computer software that scans images of text and translates it into machine-editable and readable text.
The Postal Service already has technology to read bar codes on bulk packages, but not all packages have the codes, and the current system misses bar codes if they are on the far side of a package.
Brian Tanton, vice president and general manager of Lockheed Martin Distribution Technologies of Owego, N.Y., said that with the new system, cameras will view every side of a box to capture the bar code — if there is one — or the characters in the address. Optical character-recognition technology “talks to the cameras” as they capture the images and sends information back to the sorting machines, Tanton said.
“The objective . . . is to remove the need for people to take parcels that haven’t been read automatically with the current bar code-reading technology so that it all [operates] automatically without human intervention,” he said.
About 60 percent of all bulk mail is now read automatically. The Postal Service wants Lockheed Martin to increase the level to about 90 percent.
The company expects to complete the contract work in mid-2007.
Lockheed Martin has provided the Postal Service with technologies for letters and parcels since 1995. The company also has deployed technology systems for national mail services in Britain, France and Sweden.
Lockheed Martin has about 135,000 employees and had revenue of USD 37.2 billion in fiscal 2005.