NAPS/USPS Consultative Meeting Minutes – January 4, 2012
1. NAPS request a briefing on all aspects of mail scanning. We have received inquiries from our members on several issues that involve scanning including the practice of entering missing scans and scanning mail as attempted when it remains in the delivery unit at the end of the day.
NAPS would like to have an expert from delivery available at the meeting to provide an explanation of the entire cycle of scanning from acceptance through to delivery, attempted delivery, entering data for missed scans and return to sender and for the representative from management to be able to respond to any follow-up questions. NAPS would also like to be provided with any documents that pertain to scanning.
USPS Response: The Postal Service explained the scanning process; from acceptance to delivery, including en-route scans. USPS is now using ring-scanners in some plant and customer service operations. The Postal Service provided NAPS with scanning procedures dated August 2011.
According to USPS HQ, there are only two reasons for a manual scans—one is a scanner malfunction at time of delivery and the other is when a scanner is not present for a scanning event. There should be no other reason for entering manual scans other than for these two purposes.
Scans are important to the external customer for tracking visibility and internally for the USPS to show how packages are moving through the processing and delivery network. The Postal Service wants scans to provide accurate information at every part of the shipments journey. If a scan is missed in the process the USPS would rather have a missing scan than bad/inaccurate scanning information. Although there are parts of the country that place a great deal of emphasis and time into completing missed scans, the Postal Service at the headquarters level does not count or credit manual scans as a success. Therefore, there is no credit for manual scans in scanning performance and manual scans do not increase performance measurement.
Missed Scan Report – IMS Assistant – pieces not scanned. For pieces that are time/date sensitive it is important to get a scan. The intention of IMS Report is to see if carriers/clerks are scanning correctly. The intent of the report was not for the field to go back and input scans missed by the carrier/clerk. Manual input of scans does not count toward scanning performance, but “keyed” entries do.
IMS Assistant was to give responsibility to a specific carrier and identify scanning issues of employees. The IMS Assistant was a tracking tool. It was never intended nor should it be used as a disciplinary tool.
The field is using a lot of unnecessary extra hours having employees scan packages to generate the IMS Report and for the manager to review and then correct IMS Report for missed scans. We were advised that there is now under development the next generation of scanners that will pilot a “smart phone” for real-time scanning. Smart-phone won’t use the laser but a picture of the barcode for tracking.
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