Tag: North America

Oce Business Services, Inc. announced today that it has increased its participation in the United States Postal Service’s (USPS) Mailpiece Quality Control (MQC) training and certification program to enable clients to reduce postal costs and improve delivery. With a goal to have over 90 percent of its field personnel and management staff certified, Oce Business Services already has trained 88 percent of its senior level managers.

Through MQC training, mail services organizations can increase their knowledge of mail piece design to ensure its alignment with the USPS’ goal of 100 percent automation compatibility. Oce’s commitment to this program is exceptionally noteworthy, as on-site personnel, in addition to the company’s operations managers, are MQC trained and certified.

Oce’s training aligns with the USPS course guidelines and consists of intense study of bar coding specifications and requirements, mail classifications and processing categories, addressing, endorsements, reply mail, permit imprints and special handling of sensitive materials.

The U.S. Postal Service will expand testing of Flats Sequencing System (FSS) technology to automate sortation of large envelopes, magazines, catalogs and circulars. The tests follow board approval of FSS last month. Currently, letter carriers manually sort flat mail before departing for their routes. The FSS equipment sorts flat mail at a rate of about 16,500 pieces per hour. Scheduled to operate 17 hours a day, each machine will be capable of sequencing 280,500 pieces a day to more than 125,000 delivery addresses.

A prototype FSS was tested last year at the Indianapolis Mail Processing Annex and a full-size pre-production machine is scheduled for installation soon at the Dulles, VA, mail processing facility, where it will operate six days a week from August 2007 to July 2008. The USPS will study and measure the system’s effect on transportation, logistics and work methods before deployment in 2008. Phase I of the FSS program calls for an initial order of 100 machines to be installed at 33 postal facilities beginning summer 2008.

“Delivery remains our largest cost, accounting for 43% of all expenses,” says Walt O’Tormey, VP engineering at USPS. “Combined with costs to serve almost 2 million new addresses each year, means we must pursue every opportunity to improve our efficiency.”