ANNOUNCEMENT : ALL OF ROYAL MAIL'S EMPLOYMENT POLICIES (AGREEMENTS) AT A GLANCE (Updated 2021)... HERE

ANNOUNCEMENT : PLEASE BE AWARE WE ARE NOT ON FACEBOOK AT ALL!

Why is the sequenced mail mixed up

Postal workers discussion forum. Discuss the day to day life in a Blue Shirt.
daveyeff
Posts: 4699
Joined: 12 Mar 2010, 19:38
Gender: Male

Why is the sequenced mail mixed up

Post by daveyeff »

Its like this every day now....what used to be a straight forward prep in, has become a shambles in our office anyway. The 1st wave comes in in little runs of sequences but all over the frame. You might get some for part of the bottom row but in reverse, then some for top row of the frame and also some of it is for your mates duty mixed in with it. Now this isnt so bad if you know the frame, but they've recently been shifting people onto frames they dont know. This wasnt a problem when it was sequenced "normally" but now its all over the place you have no clue. The doms bullshit is.."the planners had rearranged the sequencing in the order the georoute says is the best and easiest way".. CRAP..he says its cost millions to revise it, but its been decided its no good and now they are getting people in to put it back the way it was...at cost :arrrghhh ....wtf are they thinking about!! The 2nd waves have been coming in unsequenced altogether which takes you longer to prep now....which bright spark had this brain storm? Its an absolute joke. Any other offices getting this??
SpacePhoenix
MAIL CENTRES/PROCESSING
Posts: 12147
Joined: 12 Nov 2008, 17:03
Gender: Male

Re: Why is the sequenced mail mixed up

Post by SpacePhoenix »

Probably down to what's been entered into Route Planner for the walks.

I don't think many MCs and MPUs sequence any of wave 2 and tbqf often the wave 2 batches are so small that it's not worth sequencing them, a few times in recent weeks I've been tempted to send a batch on wave 2 straight to manual where it's got so few letters
2yearpostie
Posts: 1839
Joined: 03 Mar 2020, 15:36
Gender: Male

Re: Why is the sequenced mail mixed up

Post by 2yearpostie »

SpacePhoenix wrote:
14 May 2022, 22:59
Probably down to what's been entered into Route Planner for the walks.

I don't think many MCs and MPUs sequence any of wave 2 and tbqf often the wave 2 batches are so small that it's not worth sequencing them, a few times in recent weeks I've been tempted to send a batch on wave 2 straight to manual where it's got so few letters
What you (probably) dont realise SP is that if you did send it over as manual if the do hasnt got many sorters in it can cost us 30 mins just sorting it, so the mc spending 5 minutes putting it into wals no matter how small it looks really does help.
SpacePhoenix
MAIL CENTRES/PROCESSING
Posts: 12147
Joined: 12 Nov 2008, 17:03
Gender: Male

Re: Why is the sequenced mail mixed up

Post by SpacePhoenix »

2yearpostie wrote:
15 May 2022, 08:56
SpacePhoenix wrote:
14 May 2022, 22:59
Probably down to what's been entered into Route Planner for the walks.

I don't think many MCs and MPUs sequence any of wave 2 and tbqf often the wave 2 batches are so small that it's not worth sequencing them, a few times in recent weeks I've been tempted to send a batch on wave 2 straight to manual where it's got so few letters
What you (probably) dont realise SP is that if you did send it over as manual if the do hasnt got many sorters in it can cost us 30 mins just sorting it, so the mc spending 5 minutes putting it into wals no matter how small it looks really does help.
I don't know on which wave any DTS stuff goes back, whether it's wave 1 or 2 (we don't do DTS due to lack of machine capacity). If it's wave 2 and a lot comes out on wave 2 then some of it will have to go manual. There's very little time allocated per batch on wave 2.
Pharox
Posts: 151
Joined: 23 Jun 2011, 16:18
Gender: Male

Re: Why is the sequenced mail mixed up

Post by Pharox »

I had the same type of issue, my walk's sequenced tray would start half way down my frame, then jump to the bottom row, in between would have a part of my partnered walk, then the rest of my walk was in the partnered tray.
I questioned this with my dim, he said, the MC thought it would be a good idea to split the drivers and walkers mail in each of the trays. So my tray would start with my walking part, his driving part and my walking part etc, then on his tray would be my walking, his driving, my walking etc.
So a simple job now takes longer as I have to go back and forth between frames. He did say that it will change back soon, this was 3 weeks back *shrug*
SpacePhoenix
MAIL CENTRES/PROCESSING
Posts: 12147
Joined: 12 Nov 2008, 17:03
Gender: Male

Re: Why is the sequenced mail mixed up

Post by SpacePhoenix »

Pharox wrote:
15 May 2022, 11:40
I had the same type of issue, my walk's sequenced tray would start half way down my frame, then jump to the bottom row, in between would have a part of my partnered walk, then the rest of my walk was in the partnered tray.
I questioned this with my dim, he said, the MC thought it would be a good idea to split the drivers and walkers mail in each of the trays. So my tray would start with my walking part, his driving part and my walking part etc, then on his tray would be my walking, his driving, my walking etc.
So a simple job now takes longer as I have to go back and forth between frames. He did say that it will change back soon, this was 3 weeks back *shrug*
Won't have been down to the MC. Sort plans get done centrally now for all MCs and MPUs. You've probably got to wait your turn for the changes to be made to the relevant sort plans
pieoftheday
Posts: 1834
Joined: 11 Mar 2010, 16:43
Gender: Male

Re: Why is the sequenced mail mixed up

Post by pieoftheday »

What a stupid company RM is. They introduce a delivery prep fitting that makes it easy to throw in a walk with sequenced mail and then a few years down the line they dont bother to sequence the mail, we may as well go back to pigeon boxes :crazy:
twoloops
Posts: 2031
Joined: 24 May 2017, 20:52
Gender: Male
Location: Sheffield

Re: Why is the sequenced mail mixed up

Post by twoloops »

Most of our frames have been put back to how they where with chopped up numbers & bits of sticky tape, hand written numbers & streets & mis-lined dividers, the mail still comes in the new sequence, with bits all over both frames, most of it we now put in backwards, a total & utter cluster f**k, well done Simon :thumbdown
pieoftheday
Posts: 1834
Joined: 11 Mar 2010, 16:43
Gender: Male

Re: Why is the sequenced mail mixed up

Post by pieoftheday »

twoloops wrote:
15 May 2022, 12:25
Most of our frames have been put back to how they where with chopped up numbers & bits of sticky tape, hand written numbers & streets & mis-lined dividers, the mail still comes in the new sequence, with bits all over both frames, most of it we now put in backwards, a total & utter cluster f**k, well done Simon :thumbdown
Yup, same ere
Seymour Buts
Posts: 1148
Joined: 22 Jun 2017, 20:17
Gender: Male

Re: Why is the sequenced mail mixed up

Post by Seymour Buts »

Our second tray mech hasn't been sequenced for ages. So I'm told, sequencing the mail takes time and money that can't be justified because mail has declined so much. To be fair, on Monday and Tuesdays there's about 20 letters in my second tray.
Clappedoutpostie
Posts: 1262
Joined: 05 Nov 2021, 21:46
Gender: Male

Re: Why is the sequenced mail mixed up

Post by Clappedoutpostie »

twoloops wrote:
15 May 2022, 12:25
Most of our frames have been put back to how they where with chopped up numbers & bits of sticky tape, hand written numbers & streets & mis-lined dividers, the mail still comes in the new sequence, with bits all over both frames, most of it we now put in backwards, a total & utter cluster f**k, well done Simon :thumbdown
Same
daveyeff
Posts: 4699
Joined: 12 Mar 2010, 19:38
Gender: Male

Re: Why is the sequenced mail mixed up

Post by daveyeff »

and they paid millions for sequence machines.
SpacePhoenix
MAIL CENTRES/PROCESSING
Posts: 12147
Joined: 12 Nov 2008, 17:03
Gender: Male

Re: Why is the sequenced mail mixed up

Post by SpacePhoenix »

twoloops wrote:
15 May 2022, 12:25
Most of our frames have been put back to how they where with chopped up numbers & bits of sticky tape, hand written numbers & streets & mis-lined dividers, the mail still comes in the new sequence, with bits all over both frames, most of it we now put in backwards, a total & utter cluster f**k, well done Simon :thumbdown
Has Route Planner been updated with the corrected sequence? If it hasn't then you've got no chance of it being corrected. Sort plans are based on what's in Route Planner
Steve_claret
MAIL CENTRES/PROCESSING
Posts: 324
Joined: 17 Dec 2011, 14:53
Gender: Male

Re: Why is the sequenced mail mixed up

Post by Steve_claret »

All of the walk data used by the CSS machines comes from either Route Manager or from geo route for revisions. Every DO has a RM champion so getting that right might be a start. As for wave 2 being only walksorted that has been the case for about a year now since Delivery To Specification was introduced which pushed wave 1 start times back to after midnight and so prevented wave 2 getting a 3 pass process.
SpacePhoenix
MAIL CENTRES/PROCESSING
Posts: 12147
Joined: 12 Nov 2008, 17:03
Gender: Male

Re: Why is the sequenced mail mixed up

Post by SpacePhoenix »

Steve_claret wrote:
16 May 2022, 10:43
As for wave 2 being only walksorted that has been the case for about a year now since Delivery To Specification was introduced which pushed wave 1 start times back to after midnight and so prevented wave 2 getting a 3 pass process.
We don't do the "Delivery To Specification" as we don't have the capacity on our machines. Many batches AFAIK are at the limit already for DPs, if we had to split every batch into 2 we wouldn't have enough selections available on our iLSMs. Also iirc the DTS means that nothing can be run through a CSS before 00:30, if we done that we'd end up sending some batches through to the DOs as manual as we'd run out of time to run them.

Whether a wave 2 batch gets walk sequenced or walk sorted is down to a judgement call made by individual operators. It's not unusual now to get wave 2 batches that only have a single box of mail. Don't know if it's just the usual drop-off of mail in the summer but wave 1 batch sizes have dropped off a lot