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Same as what Ned said so far.

There will have been internally discussions already within the Xmas planning team and special events coordinators .

Personally RM may well put up more Xmas outhouses with parcel sort to take away some of it, we have done that in previous years but with this year you are looking at even more outhouses to cope.

Either that or the business may try to route parcels into PSM sites to keep them operational 24/7. Next day service will be out the window at Xmas , it’s a struggle each and every day now . But as always the business and it’s workforce will overcome those challenges . We simply have to in order to survive and clear the Xmas rush

@dynamo.

You should have it the other way round .

We make money on letters , because the automation is there which increases the profit margin .

The majority of our parcels are handled by hand , which takes away all the profit from that stream .

You would be surprised

Wolves,

While I mirror the majority of what you say, not everyone high on a seniority list is anywhere near to being lazy. Top guy (seniority wise )in my office is one of the most hardest / consistent working guys I have seen and a few of his senior colleagues also carry that mentality.

That said . He is far outweighed (3 to 1) with some senior staff who feel they have entitlement . I appreciate the depth of your comment but don’t tarnish everyone in the list as being bone idle Because in there are still a few cracking workers . But I get where you are coming from.

Cheers .

Hi Oli,

I don’t think for one second small to medium mail centres will have space for this equipment . Large or very large centres , yes , totally . Everybody else size wise will need something smaller scale . Not outside the boundaries to achieve this but , from what I’ve seen and read from the videos on all the other mail operator case studies on the link provided , the have wholly dedicated buildings , just for parcels . We (RM) would need to change its entire estate for small to medium MC to accommodate PSM at what I am seeing as the current state and size needed for that type of operation. Certainly in AB we don’t have the ceiling height or the floor space for it to be achievable on current size scales .
Perhaps that’s why the hubs are purpose built In high traffic , central area’s and that everyone else doesn’t get the benefit of automated parcel sort on a small scale. Perhaps I’m being overly pessimistic . Is the business cherry picking where to install PSM’s , yip , I couldn’t blame them for that , but it begs the question .... What about everyone else in an office that doesn’t have a PSM. ...:Continue manually ?

Thanks mad .
Very handy to know this for working out .

If you do manage to get actual or design could you let me know . If you can’t , or choose not to reveal that info for confidential reasons I understand as I’m not sure if that would cross data protection / internal confidentiality on a public board.

Mad:

Also , how many people does it take to run a PSM in your office , how big is the team ?

Also do you have your actual vs design IPWH for parcels on a PSM.

Thanks , just putting some numbers together lol.

Mad:

Thanks for the feedback on the PSM you have experienced . I naively thought that PSM would be a saviour for efficiency costs and quality to improve , but off the back of your comments it appears the company isn’t investing wisely in its automation . Which gives me great cause for concern.

Do you know if the roll out of future PSM will be the same build make and model of what we are currently working with , or is it entirely new kit which is much more fit for purpose and meets the needs of our business .

Cheers

Thanks for the info 200.

As you may know we don’t have one in AB. Tragic to hear about with the automation kit can’t support your outward 1c clearance enough to allow full automation .

Design flaws in the kit ? Or the size and type of parcels dont allow it to be run anywhere near capacity?

Hold old is your PSM ?

Cheers

For me the parcel automation strategy into the next 5 years will be interesting. Over a number of reasons .

Royal Mail have invested on a scale of machines suited for large and very large MC’s. I don’t hear much - anything on small scale automation for Small to Medium mail centres .

This makes me beg the question . How to feed just parcel machines if RM only install it in the bigger MCs?

To get the most efficiency and run time from that new shiney parcel machine you want it running 24/7 if you could . you would need to be fed parcels from surrounding catchment area’s which will reduce the arrival volume leading to less workload for the offices loosing their parcels for processing, that is of course if we can still achieve due quality of service on those items we will turnaround.

Or will RM invest further down the MC line to allow
Small and medium size mail centres to have parcel automation where there is a bit less money to be made .

And I totally agree, we needed this parcel infrastructure years ago.

I was in the background and just reading stuff.

I read the dhl link and I’m not sure about you, but one of the first pictures there was a line of uniformed parcels , all same shapes and sizes and I immediately thought of when Royal Mail purchased the CFC from toshiba , when RM went over during the buying process they were shown the CFC working brilliantly with uniform mail but our mail we get it anything but Unicom in size and shape. A part of me thought “no wonder it will take so long to configure and trouble shoot” , exactly the same as the CFC . Lol. I was glad to see another picture down below that with non uniformed items and on the belt and I was like “phew”.

Ha ha .

Thanks JB.

Scamp , thanks for that info on the machine and timescales.

I thought it would of made sense just to get the thing built and running pronto but slightly disheartened it could be 2022 before operational . We need them now , even more so during the Xmas rush . Doesn’t make sense to me , but of course there will be reasons as to why that is the case just seems like missing the benefit of it at a key time .

Dare I even say it . RM may well offer shares as a thank you .

I’m not sure that offer would be well received by all in the current climate, but as wolves said earlier , I do this job with pride , and it’s not about getting a payment although a Wont turn my nose up at any gesture of recognition by the company to reward its staff.

And in my MC my parcels are double my forecast and increasing .

Thanks JB . Good tool to keep track . It’s better than the one I use at present

Seen a couple of posts on here this morning . Thought I would add a 20m video . It a week or 2 old now . But the best info I’ve seen from someone who knows what they are speaking about .

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dcJDpV-igjs

Isle,

Yes, they have been kicked off within the patch.

Total holding 1080
Amount invested £329
Average 30.5p

Not even sure if that’s how you work out an average . But if it is the. That’s mine .

That’s with the free staff shares though.

That is an awful lot . Doesn’t sound good . Also that’s a lot of golden handshakes in order to leave the business . Will cost a fair bit ££

@metroman.

We should list some of those strategy’s & ideas here.

I’ll go first .

Change meter / franking impressions away from what they currently look like and move over the the 1c and 2c indicias (the ones with the bars that the CFC reads) and put meter letter traffic through the CFC instead of opening manually and putting into racks.

Makes more use of machinery processes and reduces manual handling .

Another one ,

Don’t go to a doorstep with door to door mail as the only item to deliver. Only go to a door with when you have an actual mail piece to deliver to the customer ( uso change)

Cut out 1c and 2c and just have one class of social mail making it easier to process our products. Les a inefficient tie down times and set up times which is unproductive.

Utilise apps for total mail where you can ya e a Royal Mail accou by where you can notify electronically to the post person . Eg Dog on premises , safe place for delivery , deliver to a trusted neighbour , time you want a delivery when expecting a parcel so you are in ( am , aft , eve ) pay for a surcharge .

Lots to save our delivery colleagues waiting a door, return with items , going back to callers office all rework etc.

Change our return to sender programme where we don’t process return to sender mail and just deliver it once and don’t handle the rts for free .

Just a couple of my ideas in my head .