dingo wrote:For the record the agreement says the vast majority will be finished by 2.30 with most by 2. 3pm is the default postion.
Trial offices like Gatwick are now able to put 70% of the mail on the first wave and 30% on the second wave rather than the planned 60/40 split.
Remember every MPU ( mails processing unit where the sequencing machines are ) will serve a number of other delivery units called satellite office. The normal rule of thumb is for the furtherest office away to get their second wave of work first and it will depend on how many walks they have and firms as to how many batches that office will have. A batch can be up 6800 delivery points. Each batch of work has to run through the machines 3 times so it works 19 x 19 x19 = 6859 items.
This is normally done with 45 mins and normally there are a number of other machines. Obviously the nearer you are to an MPU the later you will get the mail and of course the MPU will recieves theirs the last.
Now the batch planner when you have the walk sequencing revison will ensure that any firms are on the first batch and that any cdvs are paired up on the batch and again batches are designed as a principle the walks furtherest from the office will get their mail first.
Now in terms of what time people get the mail certainly the ones in London which I have been involved in the latest an office has had their mail is 0900. Equally on a monday a different arrival pattern is used as a mail centre has a different workplan so in the main arrives earlier.
Now I know a lot of people believe that the savings derived from Squencing is small beer as you only assume its about saving 19 mins off 1000 items of mail. However sequencing is only one part of a jigsaw which incudes one outward plan which means a mail centre now only sorts to the other mail centres rather then breakdown the items to the recieving mail`s centres catchment areas ie the old PHG job so for example the whole of the manchester area will now go to manchester to break down their inward therefore saving hours in a mail centre and on network runs.
Then there is the one inward plan which reduces a mail centres inward and therefore allows further closures of mail centres.
Dingo,
Not true. A batch is 6859 delivery points and 10,200 items of mail. The 60/40 split means that 6000 items can be processed on Wave 1 (this should take a maximum of 45 minutes) and 4000 items on wave 2 (this should take a maximum of 30 minutes)
The steer on the latest arrival times of Wave 2 mails into D.O's is 10:00 and not 09:00 as per your steer in London. We have some large MPU's that are processing 18 batches and do not complete until 10:00. This results in major revisional activity in the affected D.O's. You are corrrect that some Mail Centres can achieve better than the 60/40 split. We have Gatwick, Southend and Bristol that are all achieving better than 60/40. This results in D.O's receiving more mail when they open and receiving final Wave 2 mails earlier. However, not all Mail Centres have sufficient capacity to process all MS2, MS3 and DSA mails before 22:00 so this is not achievable in all Mail Centres.
Unfortunately, this means that we do not have a solution that fits every Mail Centre and, indeed, we have different plans in each Mail Centre that commences one-pass mech plans (Inward and Outward) and Walk Sequencing. Local issues means that each Mail Centre is planned differently.
You state correctly that this is just one strand of modernisation and results in various longer term initiatives in terms of Mail Centre efficiencies and modernisation. Walk Sequencing also allows Royal Mail to change current mech kit in Mail Centres (CFC'c, LSM's and MTT's) to fewer and more efficient mech kit (IMP's and iLSM's)
...or you don't "utilise all paid hours". 
