Surviving the AFSM and making life easier for the carrier, too?
An article on MultichannelMerchant.com that we linked to on postalnews.com prompted a couple of responses- here’s one of them:
it’s nice to see somebody in the mailing industry trying to get it right. i am very happy to see somebody take a look at the processing side, now they need to take a look at the delivery side too….. customers too stupid to have proper sized boxes or slots, etc…. don’t forget ease of handling by the carrier, proper address placement so the carrier can read the address, size so that it fits the five shelf configuration, etc….
Now there’s an idea- (leaving aside the characterization of some of our customers as “stupid”) how much interaction do we actually have between the mailers and the letter carriers who deliver their mail?
PRC tells USPS to provide more information on earlier consolidations
The Postal Rate Commission today required the Postal Service to provide data on any other plant consolidations that may have occurred around the same time as the ten it has already documented. This came in response to an interrogatory filed by David Popkin. Popkin had requested information on all such actions in the last 15 years, which the PRC found excessive.
The USPS had suggested that all such consolidations were irrelevant to the issue before the PRC. The Commission noted, however, that the ten consolidations already documented by the USPS
were completed prior to the filing of the Service’s request in this case. These supporting documents contradict the Postal Service’s suggestion that past operational consolidation actions are categorically irrelevant; they are useful for illustrating the operation of the AMP process—which is critical to implementation of its END strategy—and possibly for other germane purposes.
POR-5 - Presiding Officer’s Ruling on David B. Popkin Motion to Compel Response to Interrogatories
USPS schedules technical conference on END
The USPS filed a notice with the PRC that it will hold an “informal, off-the-record technical conference on the Evolutionary Network Development optimization and simulations models referenced in the testimony of witness Shah (USPS-T-1) for the benefit of the parties and the Commission’s technical staff. The conference will begin at 10:00a.m., on Friday, April 28, 2006, in Room 2P130 at Postal Service headquarters, 475 L’Enfant Plaza, S.W., Washington, D.C.”
An online bookseller runs into “Strange behavior at the USPS”
An interesting story of a book gone astray in the postal service, which confirms a couple of things:
- delivery confirmation is essential
- the USPS is a really, really big place where stuff can get lost sometimes
- having to go through a voice recognition 800 number to reach a local post office is not a good idea, especially when it never actually connects you to a human being
Free Excel tools
Seen on Download Squad- If you use Excel a lot, you might find this useful. ASAP Utilities is a collection of 300 tools for Microsoft Excel that installs as an item on the Excel toolbar. It’s free, and you don’t have to be an Administrator to install it on your PC.
DIY postal scale
Who needs a fancy electronic scale when you’ve got your very own do it yourself one ounce letter scale, made from a card, two paper clips, needle and thread, and a coin.
It’s not as silly as it sounds- the ‘inventor’, Arvind Gupta, specializes in making ‘toys from trash’ in order to help children learn about science.
“Bring them home now” stamp
Here’s an imaginitive use for customized postage- a stamp to raise money for veteran’s groups working to bring the troops home from Bush’s war in Iraq. Click the stamp to learn more.
How about a Divorce stamp?
The USPS recently issued wedding themed stamps- Richard Laurence Baron, an ‘ad guy’ from Houston suggests the next logical issue- the Divorce stamp!
The APWU asks about Waterbury, Postcom talks service
On Tuesday the APWU submitted more interrogatories in the discovery phase of the plant consolidation case. These concerned the Waterbury consolidation, one of the ten AMP projects that the USPS submitted as examples of the consolidation process.
The APWU’s queries focused on specific operations that would be moved, and the before and after productivity implications of those moves.
Postcom submitted questions about the review and approval process for AMP proposals. The mailers organization also wants to know what steps the USPS takes to monitor and safeguard service during a consolidation.
In another interrogatory, Postcom asked about service measurement, and whether the USPS has actual service performance data for each of the 850,000 possible 3-digit ZIP code pairs. If it does not, the group asks how the USPS will evaluate the impact of consolidations on service.