Automated Mail Sorting for United States Postal Service

Siemens Postal, Parcel & Airport Logistics (SPPAL) has added new address-reading
technology to the mail sorting systems in the delivery units of the United States Postal
Service (USPS). “Delivery Schemeless Sortation” (DSS), which is a USPS compact
solution, has been enhanced by Siemens to increase the speed and efficiency of a part
of the process that was previously performed manually by skilled operators. In the
United States, USPS operates thousands of delivery units in which mail is sorted to the
carrier route.

Previously, letters in the delivery units were sorted manually by skilled postal workers
with a good knowledge of the delivery routes in the various districts. Sorting was thus
dependent on the knowledge of a number of staff members.

Siemens address-reading software lies at the heart of the system. It processes the picture on the individual mail items quickly
and reliably, and then compares it with the saved delivery maps. The software displays
the mailbox into which the letter should be sorted in a very short amount of time.