1 PARCEL PROCESSING FIELD STUDY WORKGROUP  The purpose of the workgroup centered on issues surrounding the machinability of items mailed in soft packaging.  It is important from an economic and efficiency perspective to limit the number of package templates in customer fulfillment operations.  Application of current machinability requirements during acceptance  Excess Selvage  The group’s first meeting was held after a tour of the Brylane fulfillment center on 9/25/02.  The group agreed that a tour of a USPS facility was the next step in the process

2 PARCEL PROCESSING FIELD STUDY WORKGROUP  The workgroup was afforded the opportunity to tour the Washington BMC on Monday, November 4,  The group viewed the incoming machinable parcel dock, the parcel sorting machines and the SSIU.  Observations seemed to indicate that the vast majority of these parcels were processed without incident, however, feedback from the BMC staff indicated that some characteristics of soft packaging could cause errors or damage.

3 PARCEL PROCESSING FIELD STUDY WORKGROUP Those Characteristics Are:  Irregularly shaped goods are difficult to apply bar-code labels.  Tree Nursery Products  Round  Bags not filled close to capacity (with inordinate amount of “selvage”) where some portion of the bag is less than ¼ of an inch may cause the package to get snagged or caught in the machinery.  Paper soft packaging is much more susceptible to damage than plastic.

4 PARCEL PROCESSING FIELD STUDY WORKGROUP Other Observations :  Separation of machinable from non-machinable parcels is very helpful during unloading since they are processed in different parts of the facility.  Induction belts on PSMs seemed slightly out of balance resulting in the larger parcels arriving slightly late on the parcel tray.  Irregularity reports are transmitted to the BSN on a daily basis for feedback to customer.  USPS informed the group that design changes to the SSIUs are planned to mitigate damage to parcels during processing.

5 PARCEL PROCESSING FIELD STUDY WORKGROUP Next Steps:  The group decided that because of the impending heavy holiday mailing season, the next meeting would be held in conjunction with the February MTAC meetings in Washington.  At that meeting, Group will develop test parcel deck requirements for testing.

6 PARCEL PROCESSING FIELD STUDY WORKGROUP Purpose of the Test:  Determine the characteristics of packages that fail to be processed as intended.  Determine what is considered “not close to capacity/ inordinate selvage.  % Selvage vs. Package Length  Total Selvage regardless of length  Identify the critical points in processing where packages are most likely to fail  Determine if modest modifications are possible or planned to significantly reduce failures/damage rate.