The EZ-Flats sorting technique eliminates the need for multiple second passes.
Eliminating the second pass is crucial when sorting First Class Flats for Automation Discounts using the bundle-based preparation technique. With this method, only ten mail pieces are required to qualify for ADC, 3D or 5D discounts.
Compare a typical First Class Automation mailing for letters, where the qualification requirement is 150 mail pieces. For a sample mailing of 10,000 mail pieces, no more than 70 sorting designation would be required. A First Class flats mailing of the same number of mail pieces using bundle-based preparation could require as many as 1000 designations.
Using the bundle-based technique for flats, the good news is that more and more of your mail qualifies for larger discounts. What that means on the mail floor, however, is a significant increase in the number of your sorting destinations.
Using the sorting approach employed by traditional flats sorting machines, that translates into more (expensive) automated pockets and more secondary runs. On the sample mailing above, the automated pockets combined with secondary passes have to multiply to 1000 (for example: 50 pockets times 20 second passes). Moreover, you cannot even begin your second passes until after the last truck arrives and the last mail piece is processed on the set up pass.
A bold, new approach is required.
That’s where EZ-Flats comes in: it always directs your flats to the maximum bundle-based discount on the first pass.
Combining an automated, OCR-based front end with ergonomically designed Sorting Territories on the back end, the EZ-Flats solution leverages technology with tasks that people do best.
Transcending any other hardware or software solution, the following summarize the EZ-Flats methodology which utilizes real-time parallel processing.
Mail Piece Singulation
- Each flat placed on scale for weighing.
- Cross marks on scale isolate address from other surface text making busy flats faces much easier to read and greatly reducing rejects
- Addresses can be read at all angles.
- Mail piece is simultaneously read by multiple OCRs.
Labeling
- Mailing label is applied to the mail piece immediately after it is read by the OCR.
- Label provides all of the information needed to sort with one pass to the maximum, bundle-based, automation discount for First Class flats.
- Label also displays permit indicia, Intelligent Mail Barcode and individual piece identification for precise reporting to Postal Service and charge back to customers.
Sorting
- Sorting Bins are numerically positioned in L-shaped Sort Faces which, in turn, are arranged in Sorting Territories.
- Territories are easily expandable / configurable to any mailing situation
- Sorter tosses flats into bins from a stationary position.
- One person sorts up to 2000 flats per hour.
Dynamic Sort Methodology
- Used in conjunction with the automated Dynamic Sort system, this patent-pending technology expedites bundle based flats preparation by increasing real-time parallel processing.
- Identifies 10th piece to any qualification break at the moment flat is read by OCR.
- Dynamically reassigns routing designation for the 10 pieces qualifying for the break plus all subsequent mail to that location.
