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The United States Postal Service implemented a mail tracking system to monitor vendor performance, making data available in days instead of months. The 1,000-seat implementation is expected to pay for itself in just six months.
US Postal Service delivers quality results.
The United States Postal Service (USPS) delivers hundreds of millions of letters and packages a year, not only in the United States but around the world. To manage this capacity, the USPS contracts with commercial airlines to transport the mail, most of which is bundled into "receptacles" - bags, crates or trays used for moving the mail. The USPS and the airlines strive to provide the best possible service, but inevitably, receptacles are mishandled or damaged during transport.

When this occurs, ramp clerks - USPS employees situated out on the tarmac to monitor mail flow and airline performance - create "incident reports" which document the problem. These reports, critical to the USPS and the airlines, provide a way to detect and reduce the mishandling of mail; they also provide the data and leverage the USPS needs to alter routes, change airlines and possibly assess fines. Until recently, the paper-based process was performed days or weeks after the fact, was prone to errors and had information that was often incomplete or illegible. By the time information got to the airlines for resolution, months might have passed since the initial incident occurred, compromising the quality of service and the potential collection of large sums of money. The USPS needed a better way to monitor vendor performance.
USPS chosed the rugged, portable and inexpensive Symbol CSM 150 bar code scanning devices based on the Palm Computing® platform, coupled with specific software. Now, when a ramp clerk discovers a problem, he simply scans the bar code on the mail receptacle to capture information such as date, airline and flight number. Pull-down menus and pick-lists, which constrain the report to relevant information, have streamlined the process of data collection even further.
At the end of the day, ramp clerks place their Symbol devices in an Ethernet cradle and upload the data to the USPS central database via the USPS intranet. "We wanted to be able to record the incident at the place discovered, by the person who discovered it - all at one time without having to transcribe any information," says Clayton Bonnell, USPS Manager of International Operations. "The ability to easily synchronize our data, from a wide number of locations, is a huge advantage. Now, accurate tracking information can be accessed at any time by managers around the country."
While initially developed to track US mail sent to foreign destinations, the USPS solution has been expanded to 80 airports around the country to track domestic deliveries, as well. According to Bonnell, "Using the Symbol devices, we will probably save a month's worth of data-entry time. Additionally, incident reports are getting to the airlines within days instead of months." Bonnell expects that the USPS will see a return-on-investment for the 1,000 Symbol devices within just six months.

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