USPS: FSS Celebrates Third Anniversary With Record Efficiency, Savings

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The Postal Service recently marked the third anniversary of its first fully-operational Flats Sequencing System (FSS) at the Dulles, VA, Processing and Distribution Center (P&DC) — a milestone in the way the Postal Service sorts flats.

Each FSS can sort mail in delivery point sequence (DPS) at a rate of 16,500 pieces an hour, or 280,500 pieces per day to more than 125,000 delivery addresses — allowing letter carriers to start delivering mail earlier in the day.

The first FSS arrived at the Dulles facility Nov. 30, 2007, and sorted flats for the Reston, VA, Carrier Annex — the first delivery office in the nation to receive its flat mail completely in DPS. Today the Dulles P&DC has four FSS machines, processing mail for 95 ZIP codes assigned to 51 delivery units.

“FSS processed 5.6 million pieces last week,” said Isaac Cronkite, Dulles P&DC acting senior plant manager. “The machines set records for weekend and monthly processing in November.”

FSS technology also has helped the Northern Virginia District reduce costs. The district has eliminated 150 letter carrier routes, reduced letter carriers’ base delivery time by more than 400,000 hours each year and lowered rural carriers’ delivery time by more than 75,000 hours annually. Reducing routes produced additional savings by making it possible to reassign long life vehicles to rural carrier routes.

“FSS has removed a significant number of workhours and we continue to see improvements weekly,” said Northern Virginia District Manager Michael Furey. “These savings will allow us to pay for the machines quickly.”

The Postal Service plans to have 100 FSS machines deployed and operational at 47 locations nationwide by the summer of 2011. Currently about 20 machines are fully operational at eight sites.

source: USPS News Link

8 thoughts on “USPS: FSS Celebrates Third Anniversary With Record Efficiency, Savings”

  1. Detailed Results:

    Processed through Sort Facility, January 01, 2011, 3:17 am, HOUSTON, TX 77

    Processed through Sort Facility, December 30, 2010, 10:44 pm, SPOKANE, WA

    Processed through Sort Facility, December 30, 2010, 2:08 am, PORTLAND, OR

    Electronic Shipping Info Received, December 28, 2011

    This says everyting about USPS efficiency that I need to know, I live 30 minutes from Spokane, (and less than 10 from the nearest post office)

    Dont you think that if they were to stop sending packages further from there destination instead of closer that they may result in a lower operational cost and therefore a higher profitablity, while at the same time providing quicker service which would bring more customers to the USPS.

    ( ‘We should constantly remind the American public that we are the fastest and cheapest postal service on the planet’ )
    Seriously??? are you crazy??? I dont know about the rest of the planet but ups and fedex are always faster, and in many cases the same price or darn close to it. I prefer ups and fedex 10fold to usps for reliability reasons.

    Look USPS get your act together and stop wasting taxpayer dollars fiddelling with a unprofitable venture and start making the kinda dough through efficiency that UPS and Fedex do.

  2. Actually it looks like the ROI for a FSS machine is under 1 year. Pretty impressive if you ask me. Hopefully these machines will make us more efficient so that we can all keep our jobs. If these machines can save that many man hours then management should be laying off as many people as they can.

  4. Where did they get their info from? Fantasyland? They can’t even get the machines to run an hour without a major breakdown! this is a total joke!

  5. I remember reading the machines have a life expectancy of 15 years and it will take 18 years to pay them off

  6. By paying for the machines sooner, they mean it’ll take only 150 years instead of 155 years as previously thought.

    Got to love that fuzzy postal math. These machines are a boondoggle, but that won’t stop them from claiming they are saving money.

  7. It would be naive to think automation will not reduce the need for personnel. But attrition through retirements, separations of casuals should keep the existing workforce gainfully employed. We should focus on keeping the pay and benefits we DO have through our union and other public advocates. We should constantly remind the American public that we are the fastest and cheapest postal service on the planet, and the deficiencies we have incurred are SOLELY the responsibility of management according to the GAO and the OIG!

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