Talk:Mail sorting

I did not see an article related to mail sorters, so decided to add this content. Please feel free to expand. Vlbastekzeta (talk) 16:51, 22 October 2008 (UTC) on behalf of Pitney Bowes

Response to Conflict of Interest and Advertisement Banners
Thank you for your feedback on this article. I certainly see your point, and want to offer the below edits to improve the article. Please also feel free to provide feedback and help expand.

Re-write first paragraph to read:

First used by postal services to expedite and automate mail processing, mail sorting systems are now also used by corporations and other mailers to presort mail prior to delivery in order to earn discounts on postage. In the United States, for example, presort discounts can reduce the cost of First-Class Mail from $0.42 to as low as $0.324.(Reference: United States Postal Service – Table of Prices.    Many companies also use mail sorters to handle incoming mail such as checks, orders and correspondence.

History Section: Add sentence to end of fourth paragraph:

Today, presort and automation discounts help save money on postage—and many companies use Mail Sorters to sort both incoming and outgoing mail.

Rewrite Outgoing Mail Sorters to read:

Mail sorters can process up to 55,000 #10 envelopes per hour. Systems can scan and archive mail piece images during the sort process for compliance and proof of mailing. Multi-Line Optical Character Reader (MLOCR) technology can also read and validate both machine-print and handwritten pieces.

 Remove wording from last sentence of Incoming Mail Sorters:

"which can expedite both cash flow and workflow."

Rewrite New Technologies section:

Recent innovations allow for mixed mail sorting—providing for postal discounts on letters, small parcels, flat mailers, irregularly shaped pieces, padded envelopes and even Polywrap® sheets.

In 2007, the USPS introduced Shape-Based Pricing which offered more significant postal discounts for mailers who sorted flat-sized mailpieces. In response to this postal change, the market responded with new low-cost systems designed specifically to support flat mail sorting for mailers who process between 500 and 10,000 First-Class flats per day.

I hope these edits serve to improve the article. As always, I am open and appreciative of any and all feedback. Vlbastekzeta (talk) 17:08, 24 October 2008 (UTC) on behalf of Pitney Bowes

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Mail sorter. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20081031222235/http://pe.usps.com:80/text/dmm300/ratesandfees.htm to http://pe.usps.com/text/dmm300/ratesandfees.htm#wp1021497

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Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 02:03, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

Missing automation sections
Key information missing includes:

The semi-automated system employed in the USA (USPS) ca. 1960s-2000 called MPLSM, the multi-position letter sorting machine. This machine had a dozen or so consoles where human operators would read an address and type in a routing code on a chording keyboard; the letter would then be whooshed into a chain-driven routing system and put into bins. The console fed letters into the console operator's view, approximately 50 or 60 pieces per minute.

MPLSM was superseded by OCR machines, where letters would be imaged by a high speed camera, and fed through a delay loop while OCR software determined the address and validated it against an address database. Then, the letters would be sorted into bins.

OCR sorting machines were superseded by DBCS (delivery bar code scanner) machines, where the OCR was not employed at the sorting step; rather the sorting step reads a barcode printed at an earlier processing step, and sorts the mail to a detailed level (i.e. a particular letter carrier's route, in delivery order).

Source with additional detail: https://www.quora.com/What-happened-to-the-Letter-Sorting-Machine-LSM-at-US-Postal-Service-facilities

DouglasHeld (talk) 21:41, 28 June 2021 (UTC)