Safety in numbers

Our five-year ‘turnaround and grow’ plan is in its foundation stage. We’re making important changes that will help build a parcels-led, international business.

Technology is playing a crucial part in driving our transformation. Making decisions about when and where to invest in our resources is much easier when we know exactly how much delivery traffic is passing through our network.

Our existing measurement system, MIST, relies on manual recording and involves traffic being counted at three different points – on arrival at a mail centre, during sortation and when it is despatched to delivery offices.

The new system means all items are scanned at the sortation stage, cutting confusion by providing us with one clear figure to work from.

‘We scan everything once and get hour-by-hour updates,’ said production demand manager, Martin Burrows (pictured left with OPG, Mike Anderton), at Bristol Mail Centre.

‘It means we can easily see which work area might be scanning wrongly or have scanned something twice, for example. We can then speak to the right work area manager and provide extra training if needed.

‘It helps us a lot with our forecasting to predict resource, in terms of what each work area will need the following week, also taking into account things like annual leave and overtime.’

OPG Mike Anderton, who has worked at Royal Mail for more than 30 years, uses a PDA to scan parcels at the mail centre.

‘It’s important that we’re able to see what we’re actually processing in real time,’ he said. ‘The business is sending a clear message that they’re going to be investing more in technology and that is good for us to see.

‘It means we are moving forward in many ways and I see this as a sign to our competition that we’re going to be the best at what we do.’