Mail Sorting Machine Research Articles

Slow Civic Violence and the Removal of USPS Mail Sorting Machines During the 2020 Election

This article combines historical research with demographic analysis and neoliberal/rhetorical critique to put forth the concept of slow civic violence—indirect injuries on civic process, particularly within marginalized communities. The author ties the United States Postal Service's (USPS) rationale for removing mail sorting machines during the 2020 election year to systemic moves that damage democratic participation. The author conducts an empirical analysis of where the USPS mail sorting machines were removed to show how neoliberal arguments in favor of cost cutting make voting by mail a more precarious and uncertain act primarily for those who reside in communities of color.

Modelling the Belt – Envelope Interactions during the Postal Mail Conveying by a Sorting Machine

The purpose of this study is to predict the trajectory of an envelope when conveyed between two flat belts in a mail sorting machine. Each of the two sides of the envelope is in contact with one belt. The friction coefficient can vary between the two sides, e.g. for the cases of a postcard or a plastic windowed envelope. The two belts are assumed to travel horizontally with the same velocities, but in real world small velocity differences can occur. Also, some deviation from the horizontality of the belts can be observed. These phenomena can lead to unexpected situations where the relative position of the envelope to the belt changes during transportation. The work focuses on the belt-envelope mechanical interactions in order to predict the envelope position during its conveying. A 2D model is developed which considers the dynamic equilibrium of the envelope and simulates the transient behavior at different locations in the sorting machine. In the dynamic friction model, the contact surfaces between the envelope sides and the belts have to be determined at each time step. The belt/envelope friction forces are applied at the centers of these contact surfaces One side of the envelope is considered stuck (in adhesion) to the belt while the other is considered slipping. The position of the envelope center of gravity and the angle with the horizontal axis are calculated. For evaluation of the proposed dynamic model, several cases of operation are simulated.

FMEA 기반 우편 기계 유지 보수 방법

This paper presents FMEA (Failure Mode Effect Analysis) for maintenance of mail sorting machine which is for automatic sorting of mail. We suggest the update method of regular diagnosis item and period for maintenance of mail sorting machine using the risk priority number which is calculated by severity, occurrence, and detection of failure mode of mail sorting machine, and shows FMEA adoption example of letter sorting machine. This paper also describes the current maintenance system and status of mail sorting machine in the domestic postal logistics environment, and FMEA adoption step. The proposed maintenance using FMEA will be adapted for more easy and efficiency maintenance of mail sorting machine.

우편 구분 기계 유지 보수 방식에 관한 연구

본 논문은 현행 국내 우편기계 유지보수 체계의 문제점을 기술하고 이에 대한 개선 방안으로 현 우편기계 유지보수 방식과 다른 방식에 대해 경제성 및 효율성 측면에서 AHP 방식에 근거하여 조사한 결과를 제시하였다. 아울러 현 우편기계 유지보수 방식에서 정의되지 않은 예방 및 고장 수리에 대한 표준 절차와 우편기계 유지보수 이력관리 및 정보 공유 체계를 위한 유지보수 기술 지원 센터 운영 모델을 제시하였다. 제안된 우편기계 유지보수 방법은 우편기계 유지보수의 안전성과 효율성에 기여할 수 있다. This paper describes the problem of existing maintenance system for mail sorting machnies, and presents to-be considerations of maintenance system based on AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) analysis with efficiency and economic aspects. There are standard procedure for diagnosis and repair of mail sorting machine as preventive and operational maintenance, roles and missions of maintenance technical support center for upgrade of maintenance skill in this paper. The proposed maintenance system will be adapted for more safety and efficiency maintenance of mail sorting machine.

서장 우편물 자동처리를 위한 우편영상 인식 시스템

본 논문에서는 우편물 자동처리론 위한 우편영상 인식 시스템을 소개한다. 우편영상 인식 시스템은 서장 우편물을 집배원이 배달하는 순서에 따라 자동으로 구분할 수 있도록 우편영상을 입력으로 받아 수신인 주소를 출력하는 인식 시스템을 말한다. 이 시스템은 수신인 주소영역 추출, 문자열 분리, 문자분할, 문자인식, 그리고 주소해석 모듈로 구성되어 있다. 주소영역 추출을 위해서는 우편물 주소 기입 위치에 대한 경험적 지식을 이용하였으며, 문자열 분리와 문자분한을 위해서는 연결요소 분석과 수직런 분석을 이용하였다. 문자인식에는 신경망 기반 인식기를 이용하였으며, 주소해석을 위해서는 동적 프로그래밍 기법을 적용하였다. 각 모듈은 독립적으로 구현되었기 때문에 인식 시스템의 성능 개선을 위한 모듈별 최적화가 용이하다는 장점이 있다. 실험에는 대전 유성우체국의 우편물 구분기를 이용하여 실제 우편물에서 수집한 인쇄 우편영상과 필기 우편영상을 이용하였으며, 비교적 우수한 인식 결과를 얻었다. In this paper, we describe an address image recognition system for automatic processing of standard- size letter mail. The inputs to the system are gray-level mail piece images and the outputs are delivery point codes with which a delivery sequence of carrier can be generated. The system includes five main modules; destination address block location, text line separation, character segmentation, character recognition and finally address interpretation. The destination address block is extracted on the basis of experimental knowledge and the line separation and character segmentation is done through the analysis of connected components and vortical runs. For recognizing characters, we developed MLP-based recognizers and dynamical programming technique for interpretation. Since each module has been implemented in an independent way, the system has a benefit that the optimization of each module is relatively easy. We have done the experiment with live mail piece images directly sampled from mail sorting machine in Yuseong post office. The experimental results prove the feasibility of our system.

Bacillus anthracis aerosolization associated with a contaminated mail sorting machine.

On October 12, 2001, two envelopes containing Bacillus anthracis spores passed through a sorting machine in a postal facility in Washington, D.C. When anthrax infection was identified in postal workers 9 days later, the facility was closed. To determine if exposure to airborne B. anthracis spores continued to occur, we performed air sampling around the contaminated sorter. One CFU of B. anthracis was isolated from 990 L of air sampled before the machine was activated. Six CFUs were isolated during machine activation and processing of clean dummy mail. These data indicate that an employee working near this machine might inhale approximately 30 B. anthracis-containing particles during an 8-h work shift. What risk this may have represented to postal workers is not known, but the risk is approximately 20-fold less than estimates of sub-5 micron B. anthracis-containing particles routinely inhaled by asymptomatic, unvaccinated workers in a goat-hair mill.

Location and interpretation of destination addresses on handwritten Chinese envelopes

Virtually all mail sorting machines currently used in China only recognize post code and ignore the useful destination address information on the envelopes. This paper discusses how to efficiently utilize such important information on handwritten Chinese envelopes in order to improve the sorting performance. For this purpose, two particular problems are addressed, respectively. One is the location of destination address block (DAB) on the envelope, and a new bottom-up location method is described in detail. The other is the interpretation of handwritten Chinese destination address strings. We present our effort on using as many geometric constraints as possible in the string segmentation. Then a novel address interpretation algorithm with global optimization is proposed. It combines the segmentation, recognition and address context information by the best-path search. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithms is fully demonstrated by our experiments on real envelopes.