Question

The U.S. Postal Service OPERATIONS TOUR "Neither rain, nor snow are third-class mail, or have meter impressions that are too light to read. The rejects are handled manually. The remaining letters are can- The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is the largest postal service in the celled and date stamped, and then sorted to one of seven stackers. world, handling about 41 percent (630 million pieces a day) of the Next the letters go to the multiline optical character readers, world's mail volume. The second largest is Japan's, which handles which can handle both printed and pre-bar-coded mail, but not hand- only about 6 percent of the world's mail. The USPS is huge by any stan- addressed mail. The optical reader sprays a bar code on the mail that dard. It employs over 760,000 workers, making it the largest civilian hasn't been pre-bar-coded, which represents up to an 11-digit zip employer in the United States. It has over 300,000 mail collection code. For hand-addressed mail, a camera focuses on the front of the boxes, 38,000 post offices, 130 million mail delivery points, more than letter, and the image is displayed on a remote terminal, often in an- 300 processing plants to sort and ship mail, and more than 75,000 other city, where an operator views the image and provides the infor- pieces of mail processing equipment. It handles over 100 billion pieces mation that the optical readers could not determine so that a bar of first-class mail a year, and ships about 3 billion pounds of mail on code can be added. commercial airline flights, making it the airlines' largest shipper. Bar-code readers then sort the mail into one of 96 stackers, doing this at a rate of more than 500 a minute. The mail goes through an- Processing First-Class Mail other sort using manually controlled mechanical equipment. At that The essence of processing the mail is sorting, which means organizing point, the mail is separated according to whether it is local or out-of- the mail into smaller and smaller subgroups to facilitate its timely deliv- town mail. The out-of-town mail is placed into appropriate sacks ac- ery. Sorting involves a combination of manual and automatic opera-cording to its destination, and moved to the outgoing send area tions. Much of the mail that is processed is first-class mail. where it will be loaded on trucks. Most first-class mail is handled using automated equipment. A The local mail is moved to another machine that not only sorts the small portion that cannot be handled by automated equipment must mail into local carrier delivery routes, it sorts it according to delivery be sorted by hand, just the way it was done in colonial times. walk sequence! The majority of first-class mail begins at the advanced facer can Small parcels, bundles of letters, and bundles of flats are sorted celing system. This system positions each letter so that it is face up, by a bundle-sorting machine. with the stamp in the upper corner, checks to see if the address is handwritten, and pulls the hand-addressed letters off the line. It also Productivity rejects letters that have the stamp covered by tape, have no postage. Over the years, the USPS has experienced an ever increasing volume of mail. Productivity has been an important factor for the USPS in keeping postal rates low and maintaining rapid delivery service, Two key factors in improved productivity have been the increased use of automation and the introduction of zip codes Mail processing underwent a major shift to mechanization during the 1950s and 1960s, which led to more rapid processing and higher productivity. In 1978, an expanded zip code was introduced. That was followed in 1983 by a four-digit expansion in zip codes. These changes required new, automated processing equipment, and the use of bar codes and optical readers. All of these changes added greatly to productivity. But even with these improvements, the USPS faced increasing competitive pressures. Competition In the late 1980s, the USPS experienced a slowdown in the volume of mail. Some of this was due to a slowing of the economy, but most of it was the result of increasing competition. Delivery giants FedEx and UPS, as well as other companies that offer speedy delivery and package tracking, gave businesses and the general public convey nient alternatives for some mail services. At the same time, there was a growing use of fax machines and electronic communications and increased use of alternate forms of advertising such as cable TV, all of which cut into the volume of mail. Early in this century, e-mail and automated bill paying also cut into mail volume. (continued) USMAIL 63

Question:

What caused productivity to increase?

Answer 1

The reasons which caused productivity to increase are increased use of automation and introduction of zip codes,because of the introduction of automation the productivity increased rapidly because the people earlier used to do they work manually which used a lot of time and the entire system was also was very slow but after the introduction of automation the productivity gained pace and now the same work could be done in less time and it became more productive. The Other factor which is responsible for increasing productivity was the introduction of the zip code in which area was given an zip code. The mail processing underwent major changes to mechanization during the 1950 and 60s and which lead to rapid processing and higher productivity and the expanded zip code was introduced in the year 1983 this required new automation processing equipment and the use of barcode and optical readers. All these changes added greater productivity with improvement.

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