How to Read
Our Annual Report
2000 Highlights
Letter from
the Postmaster General/CEO
2000 Year
in Review
Delivering
the Future
The Governors
of the Postal Service
Audit Committee
Financial
Section
How to Read
Our Financial Statements
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2000 Annual Report
- page 7 of 70
Automation
Fast, Accurate,
Efficient
When you have to move a mountain of mail every day,
you need all the help you can get. That’s why the Postal Service
continues to expand and improve automation in processing and delivery
operations.
It makes a difference. Every day, we handle 668 million pieces of
mail. That’s more than double the mail volume we handled when the
Postal Service opened for business almost 30 years ago. And here’s
the interesting part—during the same period, our workforce has grown
only 25 percent! How did we do it? Automation. It’s the fastest,
most accurate and most cost-effective way to keep your mail moving.
Building on this record, we expanded our focus on automation in
2000 with the initial deployment of new state-of-the-art flat-sorting
equipment, the AFSM 100. It brings the processing advantages long
enjoyed by letter-size mail to magazines, catalogs, newspapers,
advertising circulars and other items of similar size and shape.
How good is the AFSM 100? Only about three times more productive
than the equipment it replaces. When fully operational and integrated
into the mail processing system, each AFSM 100 will process 300,000
flats a day—improving speed and accuracy of flats processing and
helping us to contain costs. Better service and affordability. Not
bad!
At the same time, we continued our efforts to improve automated
processes for other types of mail. Funding was authorized to expand
the ability of Multi-line Optical Character Readers to sort a wider
range of letter sizes. This is significant—while only about 8 percent
of the letter mail we receive each day is processed manually, it
accounts for one-half of letter mail processing labor costs. Manual
sorting, at about $55 per thousand letters, costs about 10 times
more than automated processing. This change will help us move an
additional half-billion pieces of letter mail to automated operations.
In the package area, we have purchased smart technology that will
align, measure and sort bar coded parcels—without the need for labor-intensive
manual sorting. The technology also streamlines the purchase and
return of goods purchased over the Internet. Prototype units have
been deployed and tested at our Dallas and Pittsburgh Bulk Mail
Centers. When fully implemented, the new technology is expected
to result in annual labor savings of more than $24 million.
We’ll continue using the best in technology to keep our products
affordable and, by enhancing the service we provide, contribute
to the growth of the mailing industry.
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