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Techonological horizons— Mechanization of the postal system
Robert C. Turner EDITOR
iNOLOGICAL
HomzoNs MECHANIZATION
OF
POSTAL
THE
SYSTEM
by Arthur E. Summerfield
WHILE predictions are always precarious, I have no hesitancy whatsoever in stating that the Post Office Department will undergo a striking metamorphosis in the next decade. The American people will receive better, faster, and more convenient service because of technological advances in mail handling and distribution. Postal workers will be relieved of the burden of performing dreary, repetitive, physical tasks, and their abilities and skills will be used more effectively in handling the everincreasin~ volume of the United States mails.
THE
PAST
Any sensible prediction for the future should, in my opinion, be based on a thorough knowledge of the past and the present. The United States Post Office Department is now 184 years old. It has expanded greatly since its founding by the Continental Congress in 1775, and today it operates approximately 36,000 post offices and employs over a halfmillion persons. "This world's greatest communications system uses 32,000 rural letter carriers who deliver 1.5 million pieces of mail daily over routes equal in mileage to three round trips to the moon; issues an average of 400,000 money orders each working day; and operates the Mr. Summerfield is the U.S. Postmaster General. 92
BUSINESS HORIZONS
-
-
WINTER, 1959
world's largest fleet of 85,000 motorized vehicles. By any standards, the United States Post Office Department is big business-but more than that, it is a growing business. The volume of mail has been increasing at about twice the rate of our population growth, and the National Bureau of Standards estimates that the present volume of 61 billion pieces of mail annually plus more than a billion pieces of parcel post will double in the next twenty-five years. The Bureau of Standards has further estimated that by the year 2000 there will not be enough available man power in the United States to handle the anticipated mail volume if present manual methods are continued. Presently, the Post Office Department is handling two-thirds of all the mail in the world. Two of our largest post offices, located in New York City and Chicago, each handle more mail than Canada. The ever-mounting volume of mail and the problem of handling it promptly is the key to the future of our postal service. Obviously, we must use more mechanical and electronic devices for economical and expeditious handling. Prior to 1953, slight attention had been given to the problem of modernizing the postal service so that it might efficiently handle the huge annual increases of mail volume. This situation was not necessarily the fault of any previous administration but was largely the accumulated obsolescence of the depression years of the 1930's, followed by the war years of the 1940's when little or nothing could be done to modernize the postal service. Consequently, many postal facilities had become obsolete by 1953. Post offices up to 100 years old were common, and no new building funds had been appropriated since 1938. The big "gateway" post offices through which much of the mail for the nation flows, including those in New York City, Denver, Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and LosAngeles, were completely outdated. Their slow, outmoded mail handling was the biggest single bottleneck to better mail service. Many of the basic techniques of mail handling of Ben Franklin's day were still in use. Letters were sorted by men standing in front of pigeonholes using the same peek-and-poke methods of colonial days. Loyal and dedicated postal employees had been doing an outstanding job, but they were handicapped by such
difficulties as poor lighting, insufficient space, inadequate equipment, and behind-the-times operating methods. THE
PRESENT
To correct these conditions we have completely reorganized and modernized the postal establishment. Since 1953, major improvements include: 1 A decentralization of postal management by establishing fifteen postal regions, thereby speeding up decisions and providing supervision at grass-roots levels 2 A modern and fair salary and compensation law for our employees 3 An overhauled and modernized postal accounting system, centralized payroll preparation, and improved internal audits 4 Overnight delivery of letters mailed within the area for 100 million Americans in forty-three major metropolitan areas. This service is to be rendered to 150 million next year. 5 Extension of rural service to 427,000 additional farm families and city delivery service to additional millions. In fiscal 1959 alone, for example, 118 post ofrices were added to the list of areas that now receive city delivery service, benefiting more than 100,000 families. Since 1952 we have concentrated on a "crash" mechanization and automation program that is a maior effort in the industrial development of this nation, considering the size of the operation, the, unprecedented problems involved, and the relatively short time in which the job must be completed to keep pace with our needs.
From the outset of the program in 1952, we created and built up an Office of Research and Engineering from 10 to more than 125 engineers plus more than 150 consultants today. In addition to this staff, we have tapped the resources of private industry, and are calling upon the research and engineering departments of many leading American firms to help us solve our problems. Today, we have as contractors such diversified groups as the National Bureau of Standards, International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation, and the Food Machinery Corporation. As our Research and Engineering Department got under way, our next step was the development of a $2 billion postal modernization program to improve or replace about 15,000 badly needed post offices throughout the United States. This program calls for an outlay of $1.5 billion by private industry to build post offices and lease them to the department plus $500 million to be expended by the federal government for postal equipment. To date, we have built 3,110 post offices under this leasing program, and we are now negotiating for new structures at the rate of four per day. THE
FUTURE
These modern new post offices will perhaps be the most significant symbol of our postal progress in the decade from 1960 to 1970. They provide flexible working space, air conditioning, excellent lighting, and a low first cost as well as low maintenance cost. Open counters and lobbies for lock-box and stamp dispensing service are typical. These functional and attractive one-story buildings are well designed for the efficient processing of mail.
In the next several years, many large "Post Offices of Tomorrow" will be completed. Currently, we are expediting these large, functionally designed post offices in a dozen cities. Fully mechanized facilities are scheduled for completion soon at Denver, Colorado and Flint, Michigan. Additional priority projects include Detroit, Philadelphia, Houston, Cincinnati, Oakland, Harrisburg, Boston, and Portland, Oregon. Two completely mechanized "Turnkey" post offices to be erected in Providence, Rhode Island and Oakland, California will be working post offices where we will continuously test and develop new machines, equipment, and methods for more efficient handling of the mails. As a result, I believe that by 1970 we can expect, most major post offices to include many mechanical innovations. Devices to cancel mail at extremely high speeds will break the old peekand-poke sorting bottleneck and will speed service. We already have machines that sort 36,000 letters an hour and are capable of a maximum performance of 54,000 sortations per hour. A total of ten machines of this type will be installed in various cities during the next year. We have also developed and installed semiautomatic parcel post sorting at Washington, D.C., where we have renovated the old building to provide the first of our mechanized post offices. Other machines are to be installed soon. A wide variety of bottleneckbreaking machines for the handling of mail within post offices include power and free trolley systems; conveyor handling of mail into, inside, and out of post offices; and high-speed machines for the various processing steps for mail and the cancelling of letters.
BUSINESS IIOlllZONS ~
WINTER,
1959
93
Completely automatic postal self-service substations with around-the-dock service will be another new feature of our postal service. One machine will vend stamps, stamped envelopes, postal cards, paper, and stamp booklets, and will also total the cost and make change. Another machine will issue money orders. A third machine will accept parcel post packages for mailing, weigh the parcel, and, after the customer picks the zone, automatically apply the proper postage and insurance. All of these devices have actually been constructed on a pilot model basis and were shown in recent "Parade of Postal Progress" exhibitions held at Washington, D.C. and Detroit, Michigan. Besides the physical speed-up of mail at the point where it is deposited, we expect major improvements in two other impor-
tant areas within the next decade. They involve the transportation of mail and the processing of mail before it is deposited in the mail stream. We recently completed the first comprehensive transportation study for the postal service since 1921. It will enable us to plan the more effective transportation of mail in the years ahead. To keep pace with the developments and changes in transportation, postal transportation service terminals, transfer offices, and airport mail facilities have been placed under the administration of postmasters. In addition, jet airline service will be used more and more to speed service. We can expect many more transportation improvements by 1970. I believe that by then the postal service will have achieved its long-range goal of next-day delivery of letter mail between any two points in the nation.
We b u y . . , sell . . . and quote Listed and Over-the-Counter Securities
THE
As we have seen, the postal service is now providing the machines to handle the mail of the future. However, this is not the complete answer to faster, more efficient, and lower-cost mail service. Much of the success of the new equipment will depend on the way the mails are used by our patrons. For instance, most mailers today put the name, street address, and city on their letters or packages. But many of them neglect to add the postal zone number. And yet, use of the zone number could assure the faster and surer delivery they desire. Since business mail comprises approximately 70 per cent of all mail, we are now working closely with some of the largest mailers who plan to deliver mail to the department sorted according to
• Member Midwest Stock Exchange • Orders executed on all principal Stock Exchanges • Complete statistical service: analyses of companies; balance sheets, opinions Call us, Collect, whenever we can
be of service
City Securities Corporation INCORPORATED
417 CIRCLE TOWER.
INDIANAPOLIS
B i g e n o u g h to serve y o u
94
eUSXNESSHOaIZONS- - WINTES, 1959
PATRON
1924
4 •
Phone
MELROSE
• S m a l l e n o u g h to k n o w y o u
8-1336
to you
street address. I believe this program will be greatly expanded in future years, and I hope the business readers of this magazine will be prepared to cooperate with us on this mutually helpful effort. We may need the cooperation of the mailer in many other areas. In the future, we must reduce still further the manual handling of the mail. We undoubtedly will have to use coded addresses that are placed on mail before it gqes through the automatic sorting machines. It is possible that some day both large and small mailers may have a code book like a telephone directory; they will look up the address, determine the proper code symbol, and impress the code symbol on the letters in place of typed addresses. We have made tentative suggestions to Congress for the standardization of letter size for speedier handling by mechanized equipment, and we may expect changes in the relatively near future.
A
VITAL
Higher Education for Business By ROBERT AARON GORDON and JAMES EDWIN HOWELL
2 ~ E AMEaICAN business education programs adequate to meet the growing needs of business? Which areas need improvement and how should changes be effected? What is the best background for business? Is graduate school necessary in business training? Questions like these are answered in this thorough analysis. The authors stress the need for a dynamic education to meet the ever changing character of business. They recommend a liberal arts education or a broad engineering course followed by rigorous graduate work. For students who cannot go to graduate school they suggest a new plan for undergraduate training. As businessmen look more and more to business schools for recruiting personnel, the importance of business training cannot be overestimated. This is a book that everyone in business or concerned with business preparation will find interesting and provocative. A study undertaken at the request of the Ford Foundation. $3.50
FORCE
I would like to mention an even broader aspect of the future of our postal service. Today, our postal smwice is the lifeblood of our national commerce, the handmaiden of our free press, and the vital social force that binds our people closely together. It is the greatest free communieations system ever developed. In the years ahead, we must not take our postal serviee system for granted. We must continuously improve it. We must finance it on a sound basis, charging equitable postage rates. Funds necessary to build for the future must be provided. And it must have' publie understanding of its needs and its importance to the strength of our nation. 96
What is wrong with our business education?
BUSINESS HORIZONS ~
WINTER,
COLUMBIA University Press 2960 Broadway, New York 27, N.Y.
[] 1959
iNOLOGICAL
HomzoNs MECHANIZATION
OF
POSTAL
THE
SYSTEM
by Arthur E. Summerfield
WHILE predictions are always precarious, I have no hesitancy whatsoever in stating that the Post Office Department will undergo a striking metamorphosis in the next decade. The American people will receive better, faster, and more convenient service because of technological advances in mail handling and distribution. Postal workers will be relieved of the burden of performing dreary, repetitive, physical tasks, and their abilities and skills will be used more effectively in handling the everincreasin~ volume of the United States mails.
THE
PAST
Any sensible prediction for the future should, in my opinion, be based on a thorough knowledge of the past and the present. The United States Post Office Department is now 184 years old. It has expanded greatly since its founding by the Continental Congress in 1775, and today it operates approximately 36,000 post offices and employs over a halfmillion persons. "This world's greatest communications system uses 32,000 rural letter carriers who deliver 1.5 million pieces of mail daily over routes equal in mileage to three round trips to the moon; issues an average of 400,000 money orders each working day; and operates the Mr. Summerfield is the U.S. Postmaster General. 92
BUSINESS HORIZONS
-
-
WINTER, 1959
world's largest fleet of 85,000 motorized vehicles. By any standards, the United States Post Office Department is big business-but more than that, it is a growing business. The volume of mail has been increasing at about twice the rate of our population growth, and the National Bureau of Standards estimates that the present volume of 61 billion pieces of mail annually plus more than a billion pieces of parcel post will double in the next twenty-five years. The Bureau of Standards has further estimated that by the year 2000 there will not be enough available man power in the United States to handle the anticipated mail volume if present manual methods are continued. Presently, the Post Office Department is handling two-thirds of all the mail in the world. Two of our largest post offices, located in New York City and Chicago, each handle more mail than Canada. The ever-mounting volume of mail and the problem of handling it promptly is the key to the future of our postal service. Obviously, we must use more mechanical and electronic devices for economical and expeditious handling. Prior to 1953, slight attention had been given to the problem of modernizing the postal service so that it might efficiently handle the huge annual increases of mail volume. This situation was not necessarily the fault of any previous administration but was largely the accumulated obsolescence of the depression years of the 1930's, followed by the war years of the 1940's when little or nothing could be done to modernize the postal service. Consequently, many postal facilities had become obsolete by 1953. Post offices up to 100 years old were common, and no new building funds had been appropriated since 1938. The big "gateway" post offices through which much of the mail for the nation flows, including those in New York City, Denver, Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and LosAngeles, were completely outdated. Their slow, outmoded mail handling was the biggest single bottleneck to better mail service. Many of the basic techniques of mail handling of Ben Franklin's day were still in use. Letters were sorted by men standing in front of pigeonholes using the same peek-and-poke methods of colonial days. Loyal and dedicated postal employees had been doing an outstanding job, but they were handicapped by such
difficulties as poor lighting, insufficient space, inadequate equipment, and behind-the-times operating methods. THE
PRESENT
To correct these conditions we have completely reorganized and modernized the postal establishment. Since 1953, major improvements include: 1 A decentralization of postal management by establishing fifteen postal regions, thereby speeding up decisions and providing supervision at grass-roots levels 2 A modern and fair salary and compensation law for our employees 3 An overhauled and modernized postal accounting system, centralized payroll preparation, and improved internal audits 4 Overnight delivery of letters mailed within the area for 100 million Americans in forty-three major metropolitan areas. This service is to be rendered to 150 million next year. 5 Extension of rural service to 427,000 additional farm families and city delivery service to additional millions. In fiscal 1959 alone, for example, 118 post ofrices were added to the list of areas that now receive city delivery service, benefiting more than 100,000 families. Since 1952 we have concentrated on a "crash" mechanization and automation program that is a maior effort in the industrial development of this nation, considering the size of the operation, the, unprecedented problems involved, and the relatively short time in which the job must be completed to keep pace with our needs.
From the outset of the program in 1952, we created and built up an Office of Research and Engineering from 10 to more than 125 engineers plus more than 150 consultants today. In addition to this staff, we have tapped the resources of private industry, and are calling upon the research and engineering departments of many leading American firms to help us solve our problems. Today, we have as contractors such diversified groups as the National Bureau of Standards, International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation, and the Food Machinery Corporation. As our Research and Engineering Department got under way, our next step was the development of a $2 billion postal modernization program to improve or replace about 15,000 badly needed post offices throughout the United States. This program calls for an outlay of $1.5 billion by private industry to build post offices and lease them to the department plus $500 million to be expended by the federal government for postal equipment. To date, we have built 3,110 post offices under this leasing program, and we are now negotiating for new structures at the rate of four per day. THE
FUTURE
These modern new post offices will perhaps be the most significant symbol of our postal progress in the decade from 1960 to 1970. They provide flexible working space, air conditioning, excellent lighting, and a low first cost as well as low maintenance cost. Open counters and lobbies for lock-box and stamp dispensing service are typical. These functional and attractive one-story buildings are well designed for the efficient processing of mail.
In the next several years, many large "Post Offices of Tomorrow" will be completed. Currently, we are expediting these large, functionally designed post offices in a dozen cities. Fully mechanized facilities are scheduled for completion soon at Denver, Colorado and Flint, Michigan. Additional priority projects include Detroit, Philadelphia, Houston, Cincinnati, Oakland, Harrisburg, Boston, and Portland, Oregon. Two completely mechanized "Turnkey" post offices to be erected in Providence, Rhode Island and Oakland, California will be working post offices where we will continuously test and develop new machines, equipment, and methods for more efficient handling of the mails. As a result, I believe that by 1970 we can expect, most major post offices to include many mechanical innovations. Devices to cancel mail at extremely high speeds will break the old peekand-poke sorting bottleneck and will speed service. We already have machines that sort 36,000 letters an hour and are capable of a maximum performance of 54,000 sortations per hour. A total of ten machines of this type will be installed in various cities during the next year. We have also developed and installed semiautomatic parcel post sorting at Washington, D.C., where we have renovated the old building to provide the first of our mechanized post offices. Other machines are to be installed soon. A wide variety of bottleneckbreaking machines for the handling of mail within post offices include power and free trolley systems; conveyor handling of mail into, inside, and out of post offices; and high-speed machines for the various processing steps for mail and the cancelling of letters.
BUSINESS IIOlllZONS ~
WINTER,
1959
93
Completely automatic postal self-service substations with around-the-dock service will be another new feature of our postal service. One machine will vend stamps, stamped envelopes, postal cards, paper, and stamp booklets, and will also total the cost and make change. Another machine will issue money orders. A third machine will accept parcel post packages for mailing, weigh the parcel, and, after the customer picks the zone, automatically apply the proper postage and insurance. All of these devices have actually been constructed on a pilot model basis and were shown in recent "Parade of Postal Progress" exhibitions held at Washington, D.C. and Detroit, Michigan. Besides the physical speed-up of mail at the point where it is deposited, we expect major improvements in two other impor-
tant areas within the next decade. They involve the transportation of mail and the processing of mail before it is deposited in the mail stream. We recently completed the first comprehensive transportation study for the postal service since 1921. It will enable us to plan the more effective transportation of mail in the years ahead. To keep pace with the developments and changes in transportation, postal transportation service terminals, transfer offices, and airport mail facilities have been placed under the administration of postmasters. In addition, jet airline service will be used more and more to speed service. We can expect many more transportation improvements by 1970. I believe that by then the postal service will have achieved its long-range goal of next-day delivery of letter mail between any two points in the nation.
We b u y . . , sell . . . and quote Listed and Over-the-Counter Securities
THE
As we have seen, the postal service is now providing the machines to handle the mail of the future. However, this is not the complete answer to faster, more efficient, and lower-cost mail service. Much of the success of the new equipment will depend on the way the mails are used by our patrons. For instance, most mailers today put the name, street address, and city on their letters or packages. But many of them neglect to add the postal zone number. And yet, use of the zone number could assure the faster and surer delivery they desire. Since business mail comprises approximately 70 per cent of all mail, we are now working closely with some of the largest mailers who plan to deliver mail to the department sorted according to
• Member Midwest Stock Exchange • Orders executed on all principal Stock Exchanges • Complete statistical service: analyses of companies; balance sheets, opinions Call us, Collect, whenever we can
be of service
City Securities Corporation INCORPORATED
417 CIRCLE TOWER.
INDIANAPOLIS
B i g e n o u g h to serve y o u
94
eUSXNESSHOaIZONS- - WINTES, 1959
PATRON
1924
4 •
Phone
MELROSE
• S m a l l e n o u g h to k n o w y o u
8-1336
to you
street address. I believe this program will be greatly expanded in future years, and I hope the business readers of this magazine will be prepared to cooperate with us on this mutually helpful effort. We may need the cooperation of the mailer in many other areas. In the future, we must reduce still further the manual handling of the mail. We undoubtedly will have to use coded addresses that are placed on mail before it gqes through the automatic sorting machines. It is possible that some day both large and small mailers may have a code book like a telephone directory; they will look up the address, determine the proper code symbol, and impress the code symbol on the letters in place of typed addresses. We have made tentative suggestions to Congress for the standardization of letter size for speedier handling by mechanized equipment, and we may expect changes in the relatively near future.
A
VITAL
Higher Education for Business By ROBERT AARON GORDON and JAMES EDWIN HOWELL
2 ~ E AMEaICAN business education programs adequate to meet the growing needs of business? Which areas need improvement and how should changes be effected? What is the best background for business? Is graduate school necessary in business training? Questions like these are answered in this thorough analysis. The authors stress the need for a dynamic education to meet the ever changing character of business. They recommend a liberal arts education or a broad engineering course followed by rigorous graduate work. For students who cannot go to graduate school they suggest a new plan for undergraduate training. As businessmen look more and more to business schools for recruiting personnel, the importance of business training cannot be overestimated. This is a book that everyone in business or concerned with business preparation will find interesting and provocative. A study undertaken at the request of the Ford Foundation. $3.50
FORCE
I would like to mention an even broader aspect of the future of our postal service. Today, our postal smwice is the lifeblood of our national commerce, the handmaiden of our free press, and the vital social force that binds our people closely together. It is the greatest free communieations system ever developed. In the years ahead, we must not take our postal serviee system for granted. We must continuously improve it. We must finance it on a sound basis, charging equitable postage rates. Funds necessary to build for the future must be provided. And it must have' publie understanding of its needs and its importance to the strength of our nation. 96
What is wrong with our business education?
BUSINESS HORIZONS ~
WINTER,
COLUMBIA University Press 2960 Broadway, New York 27, N.Y.
[] 1959