India Department of Posts to mechanise sorting system
As part of modernisation drive, the Department of Posts (DoP) will mechanise its sorting system in metros and other cities, set up national mail grid and take four aircraft on lease to deliver mails in the quickest possible time.
“Currently, Chennai and Mumbai Circles have machines that are 10 years old and have not reached their full capacity. Besides, they do not have higher capacity. With manual intervention around 2,000 mails are being sorted out in seven and a half hours daily, whereas the sorting machines in Italy and the U.S. have capacities to sort out around 40,000 to 50,000 mails a day,” Postal Services Board Member (Operation and Marketing) K. Noorjehan told The Hindu on Wednesday.
Apart from China, Postal Services departments in major countries use both bar-coding and optical character recognition (OCR) method to sort out mails. India will use both technologies, since it has several languages and character recognition is complicated in certain cases.
As part of modernisation drive, the Department of Posts (DoP) will mechanise its sorting system in metros and other cities, set up national mail grid and take four aircraft on lease to deliver mails in the quickest possible time.
“Currently, Chennai and Mumbai Circles have machines that are 10 years old and have not reached their full capacity. Besides, they do not have higher capacity. With manual intervention around 2,000 mails are being sorted out in seven and a half hours daily, whereas the sorting machines in Italy and the U.S. have capacities to sort out around 40,000 to 50,000 mails a day,” Postal Services Board Member (Operation and Marketing) K. Noorjehan told The Hindu on Wednesday.
Apart from China, Postal Services departments in major countries use both bar-coding and optical character recognition (OCR) method to sort out mails. India will use both technologies, since it has several languages and character recognition is complicated in certain cases.
Tenders soon
An outside agency is being asked to go in for customisation of OCR, since India Post does not have solid database to work on. “We are yet to decide on the machine and are likely to float tenders soon. The pre-bid meeting with vendors took place recently. These machines will be installed in 26 centres,” she said. As per the proposal, the OCR will scan the mails and direct them to concerned areas (pin code) or beat postman. In some cases, Video Coding Suit (VCS) would also be used to sort the mails. Wherever the machine has a problem, manual intervention would take place to punch in the pin code.
“It would roughly take three to four months to plan the entire process, four to six months to customise the software for OCR and 12-18 months to acquire the machine. We have already leased an aircraft for the North East region and will be writing to the Planning Commission for three more. Shortage of crew might pose a problem in getting new aircraft,” she said.
Prior to that, the DoP will launch a drive to standardise the stationery and regular use of pin code by the users. The business mail comes in different covers and it becomes difficult to sort. The DoP is also requesting bulk mailers to give pre-printed covers with bar coding that would make their job easier.
“After the launch of mechanisation, we will have sorting centre at one place and national mail grid. This would improve the delivery mechanism as mails can be sent directly through the next available flight. Besides, our dependence on intermediary mail processing centre will come down drastically. Currently, we have 440 processing offices and this would be brought down to 300,” Ms. Noorjehan added.
