FUTURE ADDRESSED: TECHNOLOGY KEY TO PROCESSING CENTER

Bar codes, scanners and automatic sorters are the wave of the future for the Postal Service, and the future is almost here for mail operations in Southeast Missouri.

"We expect to be in our new, central processing center at Cape Girardeau by Nov. 2," said Larry Shafer, account representative for the Postal Service. "New equipment is arriving every day for the operation."

The new, regional center will be at the Cape West Industrial Park in a 37,604-square-foot facility alongside Interstate 55.

"This center will eventually process ingoing and outgoing mail for the entire Southeast Missouri area, from Flat River to Poplar Bluff," said Shafer. "We'll start by sorting the Cape Girardeau area mail, and hope to add Sikeston mail to the list within a couple of weeks."

Flat River- and Poplar Bluff-area mail will be added to the operation the first of the year, said Shafer.

"Our primary concern about the entire operation is familiarizing the public with the new-look address design," said Shafer. "There will be no legislation to require bar codes on envelops, but we hope that some future rate incentives will encourage their use, especially by businesses."

Nationally, about 38 percent of all letter envelopes carry bar-coded addresses and are sorted by machines. By 1995, the Postal Service expects 40 percent of letters to be bar-coded by customers through computer software. Another 40 percent will be bar coded by optical scanners in the post offices and the remaining 10 percent by remote bar-coding systems.

"If the public will cooperate in our address guidelines it will help mail get to where its going faster," said Shafer. "Our optical character readers (OCRs) and bar-code sorters (BSC), the latest in computerized mail processing machines, can assure consistent accurate delivery and faster mail turnaround."

Shafer said the high-speed equipment is programmed to handle up to 36,000 pieces of mail an hour.

"That's 10 pieces of mail every second," said Shafer. "But, if the mail isn't technically compatible, these sophisticated machines will miss processing it; and, in turn, people will miss the related benefits."

Shafer said the OCRs and bar-code sorters (OCSs) are the latest in computerized processing machines.

"We've always been taught to use upper- and lower-case letters," said Shafer. "And we've always used commas between cities and states, and periods after abbreviations."

That's all changed.

"Businesses will be asked to use all-cap letters on address labels," Shafer said. "And there will be no punctuation of any kind no commas, no periods, nothing. "This format is a must for the new machinery we'll have here," said Shafer.

Following is a simple addressing guideline:

MR BILL T JOHNSON

ABC PRODUCTS INC

1295 S GEORGE AVE RM 378

WASHINGTON DC 12345-678

"We also urge people to use a return address, using the same format," said Shafer.

Not all has been positive for the new computerized program since it was established in the mid-1980s.

Some complaints have been registered concerning the length of time it takes a local letter to be delivered in the same community in which it was mailed. Some complaints were registered recently in the Rolla area.

"We had a few complaints," said a spokesman for the Rolla Chamber of Commerce. "Some people wrote letters to their congressmen and to the U.S. Postmaster in Washington, D.C."

Those complaints followed the switch to a central processing center in June, when mail from the Rolla area was routed to the Springfield processing center and in some cases delivery took up to four and five days.

"This could happen," said Cape Girardeau Postmaster Mike Keefe. "But, it (delays) will eventually be smoothed out."

He said that each community post office will be installing a box for local mail delivery.

"That mail will not leave the community; however, any mail not placed in the local box will be sent to the nearest distributing center for processing. In that case, delivery could take longer."

Keefe explained, however, that the processing center was committed to overnight mail.

"All mail received at the processing center here is supposed to be returned to where it is going the next day, but things can happen," he said. "We know that when we initially get into this there will be some problems. There will be some mail which is not readable by the machines; there will be some mail that will be mishandled. But once everything smooths out the operation will be better.

"We do anticipate some problems initially," he said. "But the more mail that is addressed correctly, the smoother things will be. That's one of the reasons we're stressing designs for addresses."