In this episode, we're embarking on a journey into the fascinating world of postal technology and automation. Every day, the Postal Service handles over 400 million pieces of mail, not to mention the packages that are processed daily. Join us to get an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at how the Postal Service leverages technology to sort each piece of mail and every package with incredible efficiency, ensuring it's ready for swift delivery.
This week on Mailin' It, we're shedding light on the marvels of technology that powers our mail and package processing. To guide us through this journey of innovation and technology, we welcome back Linda Malone, our Vice President, Engineering Systems. Join us for an exclusive behind-the-scenes look into the Postal Service's technology strategy and the profound impact that new types of automation have on our service. So, get ready to be amazed by the world of automation at the Postal Service.
Karla Kirby
Hello and welcome to Mailin’ It - the official podcast of the United States Postal Service. I'm Karla Kirby.
Jonathan Castillo
And I'm Jonathan Castillo.
Karla Kirby
Hey, Jonathan. We've got, what, two episodes under our belt? How you settling in?
Jonathan Castillo
I am absolutely loving it. I get to meet a lot of really interesting people, like, I guess today, Linda Malone.
Karla Kirby
All right, Well, tell us what's on tap for today.
Jonathan Castillo
Absolutely, Karla. Every day on average, the Postal Service delivers more than 162 million pieces of First-Class Mail. And as mindboggling as that number is. The Postal Service actually process is more than two and a half times that much mail every day. That's roughly 421 million pieces of mail. And that doesn't even count the 24 million packages we process daily.
We talked a lot on the podcast about the delivery side of what we do. Today, we're going to take a behind the scenes look at the unique way the Postal Service uses technology to sort each person's mail in packages from the rest of the stream and get them ready for delivery.
Karla Kirby
Well, I'm glad we're talking about this, Jonathan, because automation at the Postal Service has come a long way from the days when most sorting and processing were done really by hand. Today, some mail in packages go from origin to destination without being touched by a person until a carrier takes them out for delivery. Here to tell us more about the Postal Service's technology strategy and the impact new types of automation is having on service is Linda Malone, our vice president of Engineering Systems.
Linda, welcome back to Mailin’ it.
Linda Malone
Well, thank you. I'm so excited to be here. So thank you very much for the invite back.
Karla Kirby
So, Linda, we spoke to you last summer for our episode about the Postal Service's COVID 19 test kit delivery operation. For listeners who didn't catch that episode, why don't you tell us a little about yourself and your work here at the Postal Service?
Linda Malone
Oh, absolutely. I've been very fortunate in my career at the Postal Service. So I am going on my 39th year and I've kind of split it between being in the field and being at headquarters. So I started as a letter carrier in 1985 in the great city of Wilmington, Delaware. I then went into management. I ended up becoming the plant manager at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the district manager in South Jersey.
I was for four years, the vice president of Cap Metro, where I had oversight and organization of the entire cap metro area. I was also the Vice President of Network and Logistics. So I had policy and programs on all the networks and logistics side. And right now, I'm in my best job ever as Vice President of Engineering Systems.
Karla Kirby
It's quite a bit of experience.
Jonathan Castillo
Yeah. And it also gives me a lot of hope as a former letter carrier to that to see maybe what I can one day achieve. So but when I hear the word engineering, I tend to think about, you know, like designing and kind of building things. What does engineering look like at the Postal Service?
Linda Malone
Engineering in the traditional sense is when we design, we cost evaluate, we implement new machines, are new technological processes or maybe new scanners that would be engineering in its truest form from the post office. Engineering. Now under Louis DeJoy and Delivering for America also encompasses floor layouts, flow of mail, having transport work. How much time do you spend walking the work room floors are a better path to follow so that we can save steps. Containerized staging and filling it up to the max, filling our trucks up to the max. So we have really taken an integral role in this network modernization. And I got about half my people right now working on that aspect.
Karla Kirby
So we've covered different aspects of the DFA on the podcast and how it's shaping the future of the Postal Service just in general. But how has the DFA shaped your approach to engineering and system design?
Linda Malone
So the plan for Delivering for America, we call it DFA, I think has two real core objectives. The first one is to take care of our employees, and I think everything that's in the DFA ultimately takes care of our employees. The second one is taking care of our infrastructure. And if we get those two to married together and optimize, then the result is we take care of the customer.
So the plan itself, reprioritize is everything the Postal Service does brings. All of the support groups, all the vice presidents, everybody is keenly aware of this road that we're traveling on Delivering for America, decisions like budgets, what we buy, capital investments, how we use our workforce is all done with the priority of achievement of something that's in that Delivering for America plan.
And at the end of the day, the successes will be we're going to grow our business, we are going to have opportunities for our customers to now more and more with us. We're going after markets that we've never had before. So I am just very proud of the Deliver it for America plan, our commitment to it, the updates that we do to it, it really prioritizes the work that I do and my group does.
Jonathan Castillo
That's amazing. And, you know, I got to say, a lot of the things that you're talking about sounds a lot like continuous improvement. Does that sound familiar?
Linda Malone
Continuous improvement, operational excellence, standard work. And here's you know, because the Postal Service dabbled in that for years and years and years.
Jonathan Castillo
Right… Right.
Linda Malone
But you need you need to be speaking in one voice. So we needed to have the organizational change where we were.
In the same lane row in the same way. And then the second thing is, is you need your top guy to understand the benefits of standard work, not only on the efficiencies and on savings and on work hours, but also in the customer experience. The consist agency of the customer experience. And over the years I've heard from a lot of our customers, they'll go to plan A and they'll get this a level of service, Plan B, get that level of service while we consistently keep the customer experience the same.
That's when we can grow because everybody knows what our benefits are and everybody's working together to achieve them.
Karla Kirby
One band, one sound.
Jonathan Castillo
That's absolutely right, Karla.
Linda Malone
I love that.
Jonathan Castillo
Now, Linda, you had mentioned aging type of infrastructure and there's been a, you know, investment into our machines, our technology. How many package sorting machines have we installed nationwide since the implementation of Delivering for America?
Linda Malone
What we had in the last three years was a 73% growth in the number of machines we deployed.
Jonathan Castillo
Wow.
Linda Malone
So it's well over 300 machines that we deployed nationwide. They are beneficial. We are now having better visibility. Ergonomically, it's better with our with our employees. We're more efficient. And with this standard work, we have given concrete yields expectations on what needs to be achieved on these machines and then how to properly run the machines to get those achievements.
Jonathan Castillo
Standardization, all the way it works.
Karla Kirby
Absolutely.
Jonathan Castillo
Absolutely. You know, I think that a lot of people would probably be surprised at the amount of technology and automation that's at work. Right. In a typical postal service processing facility. Can we talk about the new sorting and delivery centers, which we call as in.
Linda Malone
This is this is definitely a hallmark in the Delivering for America plan and the network modernization. What these indices do is it'll take maybe 5 to 10 different post offices and will consolidate their carriers under a single roof. So now I have, instead of 20 carriers, I might have 200 or 400 carriers under a single roof.
Jonathan Castillo
Okay.
Linda Malone
Then the other thing that it does is it gives this super center responsibility for a bunch of subordinate sites. So if I may, I'll talk in realities because I'm working in Richmond now. So Richmond has an S&D.C. It's the Richmond S&DC. They take care of their hundred carriers that are in the building and then they have a 101 offices that they sort the machine up all mail.
And then I send them letters, flats and non machineable mail. They loaded onto a truck and they send it out. Now, the genius of this and this is where I get so excited in in Delaware, we have this tiny little post office. It's called Kirkwood, Delaware. It now I'm going back a little bit. It's still there, but I'm going back a little bit.
30 years ago when I was working in Delaware, it's in like a hardware little convenience shop.
Jonathan Castillo
Okay.
Linda Malone
It had maybe 40 post office boxes. So picture this. I mean, we were talking teeny, teeny, tiny. Every day a 53 foot tractor trailer would drive down that street. There's, like four spaces right out front. Couldn't get in a parking lot. It would block the road, two lane road. Truck driver would get out and literally hand maybe a tray of mail and maybe two parcels.
We were sending in 53 foot trucks everywhere. So now in these indices, what we've come up with is a new category of employees and it's called PVO driver. And what that does, it's a much smaller truck and it could be as small as a van depending on the amount of volume you're going to take out. Much smaller trucks, you don't need a CDL.
And right now there's competitive wars for CDL drivers, right? It's or a postal employee now goes back to Delivering for America, taking care of the people. He knows this is a good unionized job. He knows it's good benefits. So it's a very good thing to grow our employee base. Yeah.
Jonathan Castillo
So bringing those jobs back to us.
Linda Malone
They’re with us and then they're taking care of the littler offices.
Karla Kirby
Right. And a closer line of sight.
Jonathan Castillo
Yeah, absolutely. Now, Linda, it's my understanding that, you know, we're starting to aggregate these smaller delivery units, as you had mentioned. And to what, maybe about 400 S&DC is around the country, is that right?
Linda Malone
That's in the plan right now. It'd be about 400 across the country. So the other thing would be is look at the reach of people. We would have out of one of those S&DC as you're talking a couple hundred thousand people where right now when you only have 20 carriers, it's much smaller than that. But the beauty of it is we're not taking away the post office.
Exactly. So the post office is remaining in these communities because we recognize the importance of having a presence there in those communities. And when you have 31,000 post offices, we're pretty much everywhere, but we're not taking that avenue away from these smaller, more rural communities. And I think that's just beautiful.
Karla Kirby
So they're still going to have the convenience of, yes, post office that is great. Yes. So when you talk about the S&DC, and we talked about the, you know, investment in the machines, what type of machines are in this?
Linda Malone
If you can picture this machine. So it's a belt that runs down the backbone and it's there's like four hampers and they're on tilde, so they're they're angled so the employees can reach into a hamper. There's little squares on the belt. Ideally, if you fill every square, you get about 50, 100 pieces per hour.
They are working out these machines. They are doing a beautiful job with the technology, with the sortation, every package that goes down, the backbone, it goes through a little tunnel. There's a camera, we take a picture or we read the barcode. Then we make a short decision as to what shoot or run off of the machine the package would go to, and then it's sorted there.
Jonathan Castillo
Wow. What I'm hearing is that our package processing capacity has totally increased it.
Linda Malone
We have increased our package processing capacity nationwide about 70 million processing handling daily. It's phenomenal the amount of capacity that we have in our network.
Jonathan Castillo
Now every year, just getting better and better every year. .
Linda Malone
Better and better.
Jonathan Castillo
Now, let me ask you this. So, you know, the Postal Service has been using sorting machines for decades. So I guess my question would really be, you know, how how do these machines differ from what we've had in the past? How do they really work and how do they fit into our larger strategy of, you know, creating greater efficiency throughout our network?
Linda Malone
Well, the technology to be able to read the addresses and sort them correctly is far better than than we've ever, ever even a managed. If it doesn't have a barcode, we can read handwriting, we can run algorithms, you know, to get close to it. So if we see your name and an address and we know that you're in this neighborhood, we and let's say you have a you're missing the number or directional, we can fill that in.
So we have grown leaps and bounds. Well, the other part, especially on the machines that I'm putting into our plants, is we're allowing a bigger, heavier box than what we have in the past. So it's like a 16 by 8 by 22, up to 75. That's kind of our sweet spot. And we know that's the shape or the dimension of the package that we need to make sure we keep an automation so that we can be efficient.
Jonathan Castillo
Linda There are a few other pieces of, you know, new package sorting equipment that that maybe we, you know, we could touch on. There's the ADUS now, and I'm going to throw out a whole lot of acronyms here. But let's say the automated delivery unit sorter or ADUS, as it were, the flat sorting machine. Right. The automated parcel and bundle sorter looking.
Tell me about those are.
Linda Malone
Yeah, let's talk about the HOPS. That's our newest and our latest and greatest and it can handle the bigger sized packages in the heavier so the 16 by 18 by 22 and the 25. Okay that is in about nine sites and I think I have 30 machines out there right now. Oh, very good. It is a fast machine.
We get about 8500 pieces per hour. Okay. It does a great job on the sorting in the machine and it does a great job with variability in the sizes. So one of the things the Postal Service has is, you know, we have the nice boxes, you know, you'll get a sneaker box and they're beautiful to sort, but then you get the big bags that might have like a lipstick in it that could fold up and crumble up.
So this machine is very good at sorting that out, separating it from other pieces and allowing us to get a good read on out on the first time.
Jonathan Castillo
That's something that some of the older machines just couldn't do. It sounds like a lot of Machines had a lot of trouble with that.
Linda Malone
They struggled with that type and you're at a point where you got one or two things. Either you adapt the technology to what are mailers want to mail, or you tell the mailers, this is all you can mail in. And and that's not a good way to run a business. Absolutely.
Jonathan Castillo
Your customers say Goodbye to you. If I was a shipper, you told me that I'd say, okay, I'll find somebody that can write that makes sense.
Karla Kirby
So there's another really important piece of technology that we want to discuss. It's not new. In fact, it was invented in the 1950s, and we've been using it since the early eighties. From what I can recall, if you haven't guessed it already, it's the barcode. So why are barcodes so important for the work that your team does?
Linda Malone
Wow. Barcodes everywhere now are the building bars of life. Like you can't do anything without a barcode. In its infancy. In 1980, I was actually working on that program. It was very straightforward. If there's any old timers out there, 74210 is the is the magic numbers to decode a barcode, but it was very linear and very succinct and wasn't really an abundance of information.
Then we went to like a four state barcode where you could use a horizon above and below the line. And then we progressed to what we have now is the intelligent mail barcode where mailers can put in their I.D. they can put in a sequence number. Once they have that, they have a license plate on every letter and they know where it is at any moment in time.
It is so called. Plus we've given them a whole lot of what we call service type codes. So you could say what type of mail it is, what kind of special services were on there, whether or not it contains hazardous materials. So there is a wealth of information. So barcodes we need barcodes for everything. If we're if we're looking at our letter machines, we rely on the barcodes to sort the mail and what we call carrier walk sequence.
So when a carrier gets a tray of mail, the mail will be in the order that the carrier walks its route that day. Wow.
Karla Kirby
Wow.
Jonathan Castillo
Yeah. If you had to, you know, give us a ballpark number. How many pieces of mail do you think that machine can sort out?
Linda Malone
It is very, very efficient. We say about 34 to 36000. I've seen as high as 40,000. Wow. So that is a very efficient machine and can do a lot with the barcode on some of the machines. Have additional cameras. If there's not a barcode, we take a picture, we will apply a barcode. It's an amazing, amazing. And we talk about letters and we do way more letters on a per piece basis than we do parcels.
So having this more mature technology and the ability to sort that way is definitely an advantage in the overall scheme of things.
Jonathan Castillo
And I know that you mentioned, you know, kind of the progression of the technology from, you know, like a very simple linear type of thing when it rolled out. Now a lot more advanced mailers can put in lots of different types of, you know, kind of coding to, you know, kind of differentiate the mail. I'm assuming that, you know, it's not really just about we did talk about the the speed, but I'm assuming it's also about like as a mailer, I want to have visibility on that piece.
I get to see the process as it's going through. Does that help a little bit with that, you know, that new technology or the way it kind of grown?
Linda Malone
It does. The mailer will see the operation that it's on. If you're a customer and you apply for informed delivery, it's free. It's so cool. You get an email every day and it'll give you a picture of what's in your mailbox so you can look and see, Oh, my son or daughter got their report card today. I know what's waiting for me when I get home.
It is a very cool feature. So we take the pictures, we organize them by the barcode and by the delivery addresses and by the name of the person who lives at the delivery address so that you can get that information. So there is a wealth of information in the barcode and then how we digitize the mail piece for customers convenience is.
Jonathan Castillo
All off the barcode, all.
Linda Malone
Off the DBCS as well.
Jonathan Castillo
Technology that's been around since, what, the fifties, you said?
Linda Malone
Well, the barcodes have been around since the fifties
Jonathan Castillo
Been using since 88. Wow. So we talked about the old tech or the older technology, the new technology that's coming out. What kind of impact would you say all this all of this technology is having on the Postal Service's performance over the past few years? And really, I guess this really kind of feeds into the operational excellence part of it.
You know, is there a clear connection between increased automation and better performance?
Linda Malone
There's definitely a high correlation between the two. There's also a high correlation on our visibility. So the information we give our customers, the information we give our mailers for their customers is all perfected. When we have a lot of automation out there. One of the things we're working on right now and it's pretty much still in its infancy, is edge computing and edge computing says, Let me take all the analysis I would do and do it at the source where the data is generated.
So now what we would have to do is send the mail maybe to a to a data site, have it worked up and send it back. This is all in the backbone of the machine in real time happenings. So if I'm looking at mail pieces and let's say I see a piece in it, I see that that label was used last week and we've already used that label, so there's no postage on that.
I can do something different with that mail piece. I can send it to a different container. I can reach out to the customer. I know short paid because I weigh all the pieces, I dimensionalize all my pieces. So there's a lot of things now I can do about the performance of the mail, the quality of the mail, and the assurance on a revenue perspective that we're getting the monies that is due to us for the work that we're performing on the mail pieces.
Jonathan Castillo
So this edge technology, something a little bit newer, right?
Linda Malone
Oh, it's brand new. It's brand new. It is really brand new. It is really cool because we see applications where we can very near future. We can do a prescriptive analysis of a machine and then when our maintenance people come over, we tell meaning the machine says, Hey, this is what you need to do to fix me. So instead of saying, Oh, today's your oil, your oil change a day, or today this bill gets change, we can look and say, You know what, I see this ball bearing and it was wearing down or I hear this with on the belt.
So you need to change this belt. You need to change the ink in the printer. You need to do that. So having the ability to analyze data very quickly for a multi able sources on the backbone of a machine, it's huge. It's a game changer.
Jonathan Castillo
A game changer. Yeah, that's exactly right.
Karla Kirby
So, Linda, we've talked about the automation, We've talked about the different machines. We've talked about redesigns of the Postal Service all around the DFA. At the end of the day, what is our goal and where is all of this going to take us?
Linda Malone
Wow, what a great question. Following the DFA, speaking with one line, getting optimized mail flows, making sure the right track goes down that tiny little lane. That's not a gas guzzling 53 footer with, you know, four things in the back of the truck, making sure that we better utilize our equipment to capacity, our transportation capacity. We take care of our people.
I mean, we have converted many, many jobs, 150,000 jobs. We've converted it so that people have full time status in the proud, full about the work that they do. So we're taking care of our people. We're taking care of our of our plants. We're taking care of our post offices where recognize, using the presence that we have in all the communities that we honorably serve.
This is a recipe for just total success. We will be more consistent, we will be more efficient. We will be ready, able and willing to take on any additional volume that comes our way. We will be a premier player, a better player in the communications business, and that's because we have a leader that has brought us together, shown us our ways and created a fantastic plan that we're adhering to.
Karla Kirby
Well, that is a great summation. Thank you so much. Well, we've definitely gotten a lot of good information today. Linda. We want to thank you for coming out. As with every episode that has been a learning experience for me.
Jonathan Castillo
100% for me, I learned things that I never knew about all the package process. I want to learn more.
Linda Malone
Well, thank you very much. And if any of your listeners are interested in a career at the Postal Service, I would highly, highly recommend it. We're a great company to work for, so thank you very much for having me here today. This was great.
Jonathan Castillo
Thank you for that.
Karla Kirby
Thank you so much. And be sure to come back when the newest thing comes out. I will. Thank you.
Jonathan Castillo
Love it. Thanks, Linda.
Karla Kirby
Now we're ready for another Did You Know. In this segment we talk about interesting facts that most people probably don't know about the Postal Service. Why don't you get us started, Jonathan?
Jonathan Castillo
Sure. As you might know, companies that use direct mail send out lots of materials every year. Well, it turns out a large number of those mailings can't be delivered for one reason or another. Did you know the Postal Service offers an efficient way to get rid of those undeliverable mail pieces? It's called secure destruction, and it's part of our Blue Earth sustainability initiatives.
Karla Kirby
Okay, so how does that work?
Jonathan Castillo
Secure Destruction or SD is an opt in service for shredding and recycling letter and flat sized pieces of mail that would otherwise be returned to the sender. Each piece of mail service is labeled and identified using an intelligent mail. Barcode mailers that enroll in the program receive a daily electronic notice of the mail pieces that have been sorted for SD.
The shredding takes place within secure USPS facilities by postal employees.
Karla Kirby
Sounds like a useful service.
Jonathan Castillo
In more ways than one. In addition to protecting personal information that might be included in that mail, ESD cuts down on carbon emissions by removing a lot of undeliverable mail from circulation in 2021 alone. The Postal Service securely processed and recycled nearly 112 million pieces of mail.
Karla Kirby
You mentioned Blue Earth earlier. I think people may want to know a little bit more about that, too.
Jonathan Castillo
Absolutely. Our Blue Earth, Federal Recycling Program transports and recycles used electronics for federal agencies with no shipping costs. We make the program free to all federal agencies and federal employees. In 2021 alone, we recycle about 269,000 of inkjet and toner cartridges and small electronics.
Karla Kirby
Okay, I've got a short one, a tip about a little known postal service. Did you know you can get a military care kit at your local post office with everything you need to ship a package to someone serving in the armed forces?
Jonathan Castillo
That sounds like a good way to ship care packages to enlisted folks.
Karla Kirby
Exactly. Each kit contains six priority mail flat rate boxes, a roll of priority mail type along with priority mail address labels and custom forms.
Jonathan Castillo
So you can concentrate on filling those boxes with goodies instead of hassling with finding a box and figuring out postage. What a great idea.
Karla Kirby
Exactly. So to order the kit, you just log on to the USPS website. Kits typically arrive at your door in 5 to 7 days. To be clear, while the supplies are free, you still need to pay the flat rate postage. And that wraps up this edition of Did You Know.
Karla Kirby
So, Jonathan, another great episode. What are your takeaways?
Jonathan Castillo
Oh, my gosh. Linda had just so many great points. I think what really stood out for me the most was some of the things that she touched on about stabilizing our workforce, increasing our processing capacity, just how all the new technology is now, you know, joining up, it's linking with some of the older things that we, you know, machines that we were using and and just kind of progressing it in that way and helping to achieve, you know, maybe even reducing our carbon footprint a little bit.
So you know, a lot of great information from Linda. Can't wait to see what we're doing, you know, in the next year or two. It's just going to be mind boggling.
Karla Kirby
Definitely. It sounds like it's all coming together just a couple of things I took away from that. Number one, Informed Delivery. So for our listeners, if you do not have it, please sign up. It's great you do get that email every morning of what's going to be in your box that day. Also, we are still hiring so www.USPS.com/careers.
We are hiring. If you want to join the ranks of the postal service. You heard about all of the great progress that we're making with the Delivering for America plan. You can join us. That's all for this episode of mailing it. Don't forget to subscribe to mailing it wherever you get your podcasts to make sure you don't miss any episodes and follow along on Instagram @USPostalService, X - formerly known as Twitter, @USPS and on Facebook.