Tray-based Co-Palletization for Standard Mail

Transcription

1 White Paper Tray-based Co-Palletization for Standard Mail Save Postage While Getting Better Delivery Service By Jeffery Peoples, CEO & Founder, Window Book, Inc. Lloyd Moss, Vice President, Premier Client Solutions Wallace Vingelis, Vice President, Industry Relations Monica Lundquist, Postal Affairs & Technical Support Manager October 2013

2 2013 Window Book, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. Contact Window Book for current information. DAT-MAIL is a trademark of Window Book, Inc. The following trademarks are owned by the United States Postal Service: CASS Certified, Confirm, Delivery Confirmation, DMM, Express Mail, FAST, First-Class Mail, Intelligent Mail, LACS Link, MAC, MAC Gold, NCOA Link, PAVE, PostalOne!, Post Office, Postal Service, RIBBS, Priority Mail, Standard Mail, U.S. Postal Service, United States Postal Service, USPS, ZIP Code, and ZIP + 4. Mail.dat, Mail.XML and IDEAlliance are trademarks of the International Digital Enterprise Alliance. All other trademarks are held by their respective owner or manufacturer. 2

3 Table of Contents Introduction... 4 Co-palletization... 5 What is Tray-Based Co-palletization?... 5 COPAL Program Requirements... 6 Mail Production and Verification Impact... 7 How DAT-MAIL Helps you Participate in a COPAL Program... 7 Internal Co-palletization... 8 Mail.dat Changes Made by the COPAL Marking Feature... 9 Reporting Conclusion Give Your Mailing Operation a COPAL Lift About Jeffery Peoples About Window Book, Inc

4 Introduction One of the ways you can lower your postage costs while improving delivery service is to copalletize your mail either in-house or through a logistics company. As seen in the diagram below, Tray-based Co-palletization (also referred to as Co-Tray mailing by some logistics companies) supports deeper penetration into the postal system. Bypassing a number of postal processing steps allows you to benefit from greater postage discounts and more consistent and timely delivery of your mailings. In this article, we will discuss what Tray-Based Co-palletization is, as well as the requirements, the process, and how you can easily implement it by using Window Book s DAT-MAIL post-presort software. This product supports co-palletization programs offered by major consolidators as well as in-house co-palletization for mailers that have the volume and staging space to do this on their own. This paper discusses co-palletization for dropshipped mail, and does not include any references to the First-Class Mail co-palletization process that is done strictly for delivery enhancement. Listed here are a number of key advantages to using DAT-MAIL s Tray-Based Copalletization. DAT-MAIL: Allows a mailing with a small number of trays to get the best entry point discount along with the most reliable delivery without having to create pallets to meet SCF level or pay expensive minimum charges from consolidators Determines entry points of trays that will be co-palletized without taking them off of the original pallets they were associated with during the presort, which facilitates easier production 4

5 Supports Hybrid jobs with regular drop-shipped pallets, origin mail and mail that will be co-palletized. DAT-MAIL easily separates copal mail from non-copal mail for verification and shipment by generating COPAL ONLY pallet labels. Updates Mail.dat files for PostalOne! to create separate statements for copal and non-copal Supports Co-tray and Tray-Based Co-palletization programs available from a number of major postal logistics companies. Supports in-house internal tray co-palletization for mailers with the volume and staging space to do this. Co-palletization Co-palletization is a process of combining addressed, independently pre-sorted mailings from different sources into pallet-sized shipments. This could be a combination of multiple versions of the same mailing job as well as multiple mailing jobs from different clients. Combining mail from different jobs and versions on the same pallets allows these pallets to be larger than if they were created separately for each job. This can help meet USPS minimums and also avoid minimum charges most logistics companies have when transporting mail. What is Tray-Based Co-palletization? There are many advantages of drop shipping to SCF s (Sectional Center Facilities) over NDC s (Network Distribution Centers) or doing origin entry. Besides earning a better postage discount, you can get more predictable delivery. But, many jobs are not large enough or do not have the ZIP Code density to result in all the mail ending up as legal SCF level pallets. Some legal SCF pallets could be too small to avoid the charges many logistics companies have for falling below its entry point minimums which ordinarily will make SCF entry too expensive. Some consolidators now offer a program to co-palletize such mail. They will take your trays of Standard Mail and put them on pallets with trays from other mailers and then transport them to the most popular SCF s. If you have mail that is not serviced by one of those SCF s it will end up going to an NDC, but overall you will see savings over your original entry plan and your mail will be delivered more predictably. 5

6 Large mailers with high mail volumes and plenty of shop floor staging space may be able to do their own co-palletization. These mailers would need to have a way to temporarily stage the NDC and origin pallets they create - which will be co-palletized - then break these pallets down. They would then sort the trays that are on these pallets onto new SCF pallets, document which trays ended up on each pallet and send this information to the USPS via an OCI submission in PostalOne! The Original Container Information (OCI) file is a sub-file of the Mail.dat file set that is generated to document the assignment of the co-palletized trays back to their original containers. The actual production process to do all of this can be very expensive, and most mailers, even the largest, will use third party logistics companies to do this. COPAL Program Requirements To participate in a copal program run by a consolidator you must meet the following requirements: 1. Have your drop ship mail verified by a Detached Mail Unit (DMU) in your plant 2. All of your postage for jobs that contain copal mail must be paid via PostalOne! edoc using Mail.dat files 3. You must provide the consolidator either a Mail.dat file properly marked for copal or send them a Mail.dat file for them to mark, and then submit that file to PostalOne!. This feature allows you to do your own copal marking, which will save time and give you more control over what is co-palletized. If you meet these requirements, you qualify for using a copal program offered by a major consolidator! Note: Use Window Book s DAT-MAIL to easily edit, update and mark Mail.dat files for copal - then generate separate postage statements for the copal and non-copal mail. Call or visit for more information on how you can meet copal requirements using DAT-MAIL. 6

7 Mail Production and Verification Impact With this copal marking feature you can use your presort program or post-presort program to palletize your mail normally. You can use post-presort software such as DAT-MAIL, which has the copal marking feature described above, to optimize the entry plan in a normal fashion where you can elect to either drop ship SCF pallets normally or co-palletize the entire job. After you run the copal marking feature you would print your pallet placards or labels from the Mail.dat file. If you create hybrid jobs with both copal and non-copal mail, you would separate pallets that say COPAL ONLY in the content line from those that don t. When you submit your Mail.dat for payment, PostalOne! will automatically create separate statements for your copal and non-copal mail. The Postal clerk doing the verification at your DMU would then verify the copal and non-copal mail separately. If the verifier is doing Full-Service scanning, they would not scan the COPAL ONLY pallet placards. How DAT-MAIL Helps you Participate in a COPAL Program Challenges: Normally when your presort program or post-presort program palletizes mail all of the trays are going to be assigned to the same entry point as the pallet. If you attempt to change the entry point of one tray, all the trays on the same pallet will be changed. Then if you try to optimize this job, it will only look at where the pallet can go, not the individual trays on that pallet. In the past, in order to change the entry points of the trays on the pallet to COPAL destinations, you had to delete the original pallet those trays were on. But, deleting those original pallets creates a production problem since the tray-to-pallet association is now lost, and you would not know which trays belonged to which pallet when the mail was produced. Even if that pallet was used just to transport mail to the consolidator, it has value for managing production and warehouse inventory control. Trying to replace that pallet record is difficult without changing the original pallet make up and if you do that you will be building multiple pallets at the same time since your production order will no longer be in pallet sequence. Solution: DAT-MAIL s Planalyzer module DAT-MAIL s Planalyzer module solves these problems and makes COPAL program participation easier than ever. It allows mailers and logistics companies to mark trays for co-palletization without disturbing the original way the mailing was palletized. It will first determine which pallets hold mail that should be co-palletized and then it ignores that pallet when associating each of those trays to a new drop ship destination. This allows a single job to be split between normal drop ship pallets and pallets that will be sent to a consolidator to be co-palletized. 7

8 Note: DAT-MAIL s Planalyzer module can help you: - Avoid minimum charges and weights on small jobs - Determine the best entry plan for your mail based on the lowest net cost using freight costs and postage savings - Get the best deal for mailings by using freight tables from multiple logistics companies - Update Mail.dat files - Produce drop ship analysis reports - Perform multi-job freight planning which allows you to combine all mail to be shipped on a particular date to get the best rates and drop ship penetration possible. Call or visit to get a free analysis of how DAT-MAIL and Planalyzer can help you reduce postage and get better delivery. Internal Co-palletization If you have the mail volume to support internal copal, you can print your tray tags after you run the copal marking process. This allows you to print an entry point code on each tray tag that corresponds to the copal facility. Unlike most consolidators that have conveyer systems that can sort the trays based on the tray tag barcode, you would most likely be sorting the trays manually. The entry point code on the tray tags will make that process much easier. The initial production and verification process would not be so different than if you used a consolidator. You will separate copal and non-copal pallets for verification; however, after verification you would move the copal pallets to a staging area where you would proceed to break them down. Then you will create new pallets going to the copal entry points. The following steps can be done not only by mailers doing their own co-palletization, but also by logistics companies that are doing co-palletization for their customers: Note: DAT-MAIL s Planalyzer module will let you easily mark trays for copal and generate new Mail.dat files from just the trays that have been marked for copal. Then, you can use DAT-MAIL s Palletization program to print placards for each copal entry point and affix them to the pallets, then upload the Mail.dat file to PostalOne! thereby telling the USPS which trays went on which pallets. Call or to get an in-depth analysis of your mailing operation and see if you can benefit from co-palletization. 8

9 Tip: Typically, mailers that are able to do internal copal have a lot of volume and a lot of staging space plus the operational expertise to manage this process. One tip would be to restrict your copal to those pallets that are originally sorted to the NDC level. This way only the NDC pallets will be the source of copal trays. Now you can do the actual co-palletization for one NDC Zone at a time. For example, you can pull all of the NDC Springfield pallets together that are marked for copal, break them up and manually sort the trays to the different SCF s in that NDC service area. Once you have built and labeled these pallets you can dispatch these shipments right away. You can then start on the next NDC. This will minimize the amount of staging area and labor required for manual sorting. Note: Are you considering doing in-house copal? Call or visit to setup an onsite consultation to analyze the feasibility of doing copal in-house. Most of the time it is more cost-effective to use one of the consolidators that offer tray-based co-palletization services rather than try to do it on your own. Window Book partners with major consolidators who use DAT-MAIL to process co-palletization. Mail.dat Changes Made by the COPAL Marking Feature PostalOne! requires co-palletized mail to be represented by special values in the Mail.dat files submitted to PostalOne! Also, other fields in Mail.dat need to be altered to facilitate mail production and verification. COPAL Trays: Container Summary file (CSM) Included in Other Docs field (CSM-1181) is set to I (internal) or O (external) this is required by PostalOne! to delay transmission of pallet data to Seamless Acceptance/Full Service until the pallet information has been received from an OCI Copal submission. This submission is made by whoever is doing the co-palletization. As of April 2013, this field also will force the creation of a separate postage statement for copal and non-copal mail. CSM Container Grouping Description (CSM-1102) field is set to COPAL this makes it easy to group copal trays and pallets together on reports. CSM Entry Point information changed to copal facility entry point (related pallet is unchanged). (CSM-1105, CSM-1106, CSM-1167, CSM-1168). Related Container Quantity File (CQT) records have Destination Entry field (CQT- 1105) changed to reflect copal drop ship discount. 9

10 Pallets holding COPAL Trays: CSM Display Container ID (CSM-1101) is updated to append -CP to the human readable pallet number (if leading zeros were in the original value, those are removed). This provides visibility of copal pallets in post-presort software. CSM Label Contents Line 1 (CSM-1152) is replaced by COPAL ONLY. When pallet placards are printed after this copal marking process is complete, this makes pallets containing copal mail easy to separate from other pallets for verification and shipment. CSM Container Grouping Description (CSM-1102) field is set to COPAL this makes it easy to group copal trays and pallets together on reports. Prior to the April 2013 release of PostalOne! the Postage Grouping ID field (CSM-1136) had to be updated to COPAL to force separate statements, but this is no longer the case and this is not being altered. Reporting When DAT-MAIL s Planalyzer optimizes a job, it creates a report that shows the postage discount, freight cost and net savings for each drop ship and non-drop ship entry point. If both copal and non-copal mail are present in the job, these entry points are grouped into sections with their own sub-total. The shipping costs for the non-copal portion of the mailing use DAT-MAIL s normal freight tables, but the calculations for copal entry points come from a separate copal rate table. This logic is optimized for the way that most logistics companies charge for copal services. There is also a production report that shows all regular and copal pallets with the entry point(s) serviced by each one. Note: Call or for help on meeting these new requirements for Mail.dat files that are submitted to PostalOne! Conclusion Now that you know what tray-based co-palletization is and how it works, you should be ready to hop on the COPAL bandwagon. Co-palletization is just one of the ways you can maximize postage discounts and reduce touch-points by the Postal Service for improved delivery service. And, when you have robust post-presort software like Window Book s DAT-MAIL, you can easily integrate this COPAL program into your operation. If you are a large mailer with high mail volumes you definitely owe it to yourself to try this COPAL program, and using DAT-MAIL will help you meet its requirements and get connected with the right consolidators who can help you develop the best plan for COPAL. 10

11 Give Your Mailing Operation a COPAL Lift Call or Maximize postage savings and get better delivery service by using a co-palletization program. Free consultation on how you can implement COPAL Test drive DAT-MAIL Meet COPAL requirements of major postal logistics companies Do in-house internal tray copal Separate copal mail from non-copal mail for verification and shipment Update Mail.dat files and create postage statements for copal and non-copal View what entry points are assigned to the trays on a copal pallet Optimize the freight plan for lowest net cost Automatically calculate freight charges for copal mail separately from that of non-co-palletized mail Create multiple copal freight tables Process hybrid jobs containing drop shipped, copal, and origin mail And so much more. 11

12 About Jeffery Peoples As Founder and CEO of Window Book, Jeffery Peoples has created many innovations since 1988 that make using the Postal Service easier and more profitable for mailers and shippers, including the first-ever: electronic Domestic Mail Manual, MAC Gold shipping system, commercial postal statement management system that supports both Mail.dat & non-mail.dat presort data, and the first Priority Mail Open and Distribute system that goes from analysis to printing PMOD labels for tracking mailings. Jeff is continually educating and enabling mailers on Intelligent Mail; developing systems to help mailers benefit by utilizing Full Service Intelligent Mail including edoc with PostalOne!, Mail.XML, Mail.dat, Post-Presort software, and FAST. He is frequently invited to speak at industry events such as GraphExpo, MAILCOM, the National Postal Forum, Postal Customer Council meetings, and other industry and direct marketing events. About Window Book, Inc. Window Book has enabled thousands of companies to increase profits by billions of dollars with automated intelligent mailing and shipping solutions since A leader in mailing and shipping software for Lettershops, Corporate Mailers, Service Bureaus, and Mail Owners. Window Book can help you in ways no other company can with our over 400 years of combined Postal experience on staff and 25+ developers to address your needs. Window Book s best-in-class postal solutions include: Intelligent Mail Full-Service, PostalOne!, edoc, Mail.dat, Mail.XML, FAST, bound printed matter, post-presort data management, entry planning, drop shipping, postage accounting, postal documentation & statements, meter and stamp management, Express Mail and Priority Mail Open and Distribute, New Commercial Plus rates, evs, delivery confirmation, and manifesting shipping system. Window Book, Inc. 300 Franklin Street Cambridge, MA Ph: Fax: postalspecialist@windowbook.com 12