Listening in IDEAlliance Print Distribution ‘08 Keynotes, Panel Discussions

LAS VEGAS, APRIL 8

Two USPS keynoters headlined the conference on Tuesday. Thomas G. Day, SVP for Intelligent Mail and Address Quality. Day clarified that internal measurable USPS standards will be in place across the board by the beginning of FY ’09, or October 1. He announced one more Federal Register round of comments on measurement, with comments complete in short order and final announcement by mid May. Mr. Day reiterated the elusive “carrot” for implementing Full Service Intelligent Mail Barcode (IMB) by the optional start date of October ’08: Address Correction Service (ACS) at no charge, likewise “Start the Clock” and quality feedback (the measurements again).

In the second keynote, USPS SVP of Operations William P. Galligan reminded the attendees that the IMB in tandem with Flat Sequencing System (FSS) machines deployment – 100 machines in phase I – is all about eliminating carrier casing of mail and organizing street-sidewalk delivery tours of ~ 7 hours a day. He’s also supporting internal Cap Ex proposals for any solution that eliminates other machine “touches” of mail, such as traditional OCR scanning of catalogs and magazines to undo the presorts that printers have already done and reroute the printed matter to the appropriate destination postal units. Galligan predicted the IMB implementation will lead to further sortation and pallet makeup, so as to tee up multiple zones and zip codes to the new FSS equipment. And he also foreshadowed the revision of the USPS Logistics network, but amplifying as outsourcing cross-country movement of BMC-to-BMC mail, which today can be suboptimal if only the USPS is the shipper of record. What happens when Service Standards bump up against Freight cost and efficiency.

In related panel discussions on the FSS equipment trials in Northern VA, the USPS project head Rosa Fulton and her colleague Sharon Daniel identified another anticipated engineering innovation, namely the ability for a machine to break open bundles and ingest automatically into the FSS. No more shrinkwrapped, compensated flats bundles, rather one or two straps (back to the past) instead. The address orientation and imaging discussion spilled over to breakout groups. Suffice to say the magazine renewal Attached Mail envelope and “Last Copy Expire” marketers are going to be strongly disappointed by the address placement requirements of the new efficiencies the letter carrier workplace. See the April 9 Federal Register for details. Mike Winn of R.R. Donnelley described the great progress that multiple printers and inkjet equipment manufacturers have made with the new IMB, while acknowledging that practical implementation across the entire print-mail platform in the US is necessarily dicey. Leeway and tolerances are still needed on inkjet and address panel specs, so that a large majority of the industry can replicate what R.R. Donnelley and other participating printers have so far been able to demonstrate.

All of the postal representatives agreed the likely earliest rate filing will be in February for an implementation date of May 29, 2009. This was judged by all the software vendors and publishers-catalogers-consultants-printers alike as insufficient, and various pitches were made for advance “signaling” the rate differentials between Full Service IMB, Basic IMB, Postnet (still optional for a year), noncompliance, etc., etc.   

Pritha Mehra of USPS defined new working specs for code 128 barcoding of trays, plastic sacks, pallets and other “aggregate” containers for mailers who participate in IMB. She promised in a matter of weeks new guidelines for eDocumentation and Scheduling, another requirement for participating in IMB Full Service. And she offered tantalizing “soft benefits” for marketers who choose to use the IMB as a turn-around document with business-meaningful coding for the address-specific unique IDs. Some of this was alluded to by a panel of users, especially Chuck Howard of Harte-Hanks. For all intents and purposes the Optional Endorsement Lines (OEL) used by catalogers and magazine publishers will remain alpha-numeric characters below the new 4-state barcode, as a safety net.

An excellent Transportation and Logistics panel gave further evidence and weight to the diesel/jet fuel price-driver shortage-TSA-Department of Transportation-EPA-fleet reduction-truck capacity outlook. Attendees were promised a truck freight tightening, when the economy and housing come back (in part because laid off construction workers have been driving!). The USPS promised to revisit the plastic vs. wood pallets discussion, as it has led to pushback both internally and in the user marketplace. And further fragmentation of the postal Network (promised this Spring) may – word of caution – put even more pressure on truckload efficiencies, stop-offs, and the like.

Bob Whitton