1. Keeping up with the exponential growth in the areas of
e-commerce and international mail is a challenge for
most postal operators. At PostNord they decided to step
up in order to meet all customers’ requirement for timely
delivery of their specific parcel. As well, facing more and
more volumes, PostNord decided to implement a parcel
handling solution that would also save cost and at the
same time avoid unnecessary costs in downstream regis-
tration of shipments.
Each year PostNord receives and forwards about 4.5 mil-
lion (increasing volumes) value shipments from abroad.
For security reasons the handling of valuable objects are
strict; the items are sent in separate, sealed containers
and each item is registered.
Previously, the address was registered by manually typing
all the recipient information for the items, which was very
costly in terms of man hours and facilities. The items that
were not registered at the arriving international mail unit
needed to be registered manually at the distribution of-
fice in the morning.
In order to streamline the handling, and thus the delivery,
with an aim to improve service and lower costs project
IMPC was initiated at the PostNord Arlanda international
mail terminal, which is one of three international mail
units in Sweden.
Taken into full use in September 2014 the IMPC project
has delivered an optimized registration solution utilizing
innovative image capture technology for swift parcel regi-
stration and image capture for recipient address registra-
tion and down steam tracking. “The solution shortens
lead times, improves efficiency and provides better er-
gonomics for the staff” emphazies Daniel Palestro Pro-
cess Manager at PostNord. In actual numbers the solution
has increased throughput at the Arlanda terminal from
50% to 95% and increased efficiency by 50%.
SPECIALLY DESIGNED SOLUTION TO IN-
CREASE EFFICIENCY
The new solution includes a custom designed MICS work-
station equipped with a camera for image capture and a
system that registers the address based on the captured
images. The consignments are opened and recorded at
the MICS workstation after which the items (address in-
formation and barcode) are photographed and the im-
age is stored in a database. Subsequently, the shipment is
sent on for further sorting and distribution.
In a separate room the operators register the recipient
information. In the new web-based QSM™ RS system,
registration has been simplified thanks to the coopera-
tion with ISU (the Swedish address register), which has
facilitated the entry of addresses as the QSM™ RS system
automatically generates suggestions as the users type
and fills in the full address on user selection.
PostNord improves e-commerce driven
value shipment services and reduces
handling cost at the same time
