The U.S. Postal Service expects to spend more than $20 million to equip the $40 million, 362,000-square-foot distribution annex its building at the Spokane International Airport Business Parkand that investment will quicken mail handling here. Jim Bankston, a facility activation coordinator for the Postal Service here, says the investment in equipment will make the overall project worth about $60 million and will enhance automated mail handling.


The about $20 million in expected equipment costs will include the purchase of about 10 new pieces of major equipment, as well as spare parts that will be needed in case any of those machines break down, Bankston says. In addition to the new equipment purchases, the Postal Service also will relocate to the new annex another about 15 pieces of major equipmentworth nearly another $20 millionfrom its current processing and distribution center here, at 703 E. Trent. Bankston says the new annex is expected to be operational on Jan. 17.


All of this new equipment will enable us to process more mail in a shorter window of time, says John DiPeri, a senior operations manager for the Postal Service here.


The postal distribution facility here currently processes about 2 million pieces of mail daily and, in the near term, will continue to process that same amount at the new facility. The new facility, however, will be able to handle higher volumes in the future if needed, he says.


Now, more than ever, were ready for the next 100 yearsat least, says Ken McArthur, the Postal Services senior plant manager here.


The Postal Service already has installed a $14 million tray-management system at the new annex. McArthur says the Spokane annex will be the 10th postal facility nationwide to deploy such a system.


The system actually is a large conveyor belt that McArthur compares to a freeway system. He says that thousands of bar-coded trays of lettersdestined for post offices worldwidewill travel unattended on the freeway system throughout the huge annex, eliminating the need for postal workers to push large carts of mail around the building as they do now at the Trent facility.


Scanners located on the conveyor belt will read the bar-coded label on each tray of letters to determine where the tray needs to be directedeither to one of various machines or to one of several temporary holding areas within the building. For instance, a tray might need to be directed to a machine for further sorting, to loading docks to be loaded onto a truck and dispatched to a local post office, or to a machine that will automatically weigh the tray of mail and place an airline tag on it so that it can be flown to another distribution center elsewhere.


Trays will stay in a holding area for only a short time, McArthur says. The holding areas, which he compares to parking lots, are designed to optimize the flow of mail through the processing center and improve efficiency and quality, he says.


While a machine sorts mail headed out of state, for instance, the mail that will remain in Spokane will be parked in the holding area. Once the out-of-state mail has been sorted, the trays in the holding area automatically will re-enter the freeway system and be directed to a machine that sorts mail into walk sequence, he says. Walk sequence means mail is separated by address so that its placed in order for a postal carrier to deliver it on his or her route, he explains.


A new, more technologically-advanced small-parcel bundle sorter also has been installed at the new annex, DiPeri says. That equipment, which will replace a bundle sorter that the Postal Service bought about a year ago, will be used to sort, by destination, bundles of magazines or catalogs and parcels weighing up to 20 pounds.


The Postal Service also has bought its fourth advanced facer-canceler here, and has installed it at the distribution facility on Trent for now, but will move it to the new annex early next year. That machine reads the ultraviolet sensors embedded in postage stamps to decide whether it needs to flip an envelope over or turn it around to face and position it the right way, DiPeri explains.


The same machine also tries to read handwritten addresses, takes pictures of addresses it cant read, prints a fluorescent barcode on the backside of envelopes that dont have preprinted barcodes and that have readable handwritten addresses, cancels stamps on all envelopes, and sorts envelopes according to the type of machine that will handle the letters next. For instance, mail with handwritten addresses heads to a machine that verifies the addresses, prints a barcode on the pieces, and sorts the mail by ZIP code. On the other hand, mail with a preprinted barcode goes to a separate machine that will sort it according to the city, state, and country where it is headed.


At the new annex, as bar-coded trays of sorted lettersdestined for out-of-town locationsleave those sorting machines, they will be placed onto the conveyor-belt system and carried to the next new piece of equipment, which automatically will place a plastic strap around each tray so that the mail doesnt fall out of the tray while its en route to its final destination.


The machine, which is expected to be installed at the new annex building in April or May, next will scan each trays barcode to determine the ultimate destination of the mail in that tray and when it needs to arrive, DiPeri says. It also will review a schedule of all commercial flights and determine the best route for that tray of mail to take to arrive at its destination on time. The machine then weighs the tray of mail and attaches to the tray an airline code tag that says how much the tray weighs and gives flight information on how it should get to its destination. Those trays then are loaded onto trucks, which deliver the mail to the right air carriers at Spokane International Airport, he says.


Also in May, the Postal Service is expected to receive a state-of-the-art flat sorter, which will read barcodes on letters that are oversized and sort them by destination. The new machine isnt capable of separating oversized mail into walk sequence, but DiPeri expects that technology to be developed soon.


Still, this machine will be faster and the barcode-reading technology will be more advanced than the machines we have now, DiPeri says.


He says the new postal annex here will be the first postal facility nationwide to receive that sorter, which will replace two machines currently in use at the Trent annex.


DiPeri says that the Postal Service began installing its first pieces of automated postal equipment in the early 1980s, and estimates now that at least 95 percent of the mail that travels through the distribution center here goes through some type of automated equipment. He says the Postal Services eventual goal is to handle letters entirely with automated equipment.


With the integration of automated equipment, the Postal Service has been able to process more mail while keeping its employment numbers in check, DiPeri says. He says that as the new Spokane facility becomes more automated, people can expect to see a decline in the number of manual jobs at the Postal Service, but an increase in the number of electricians and maintenance people on staff. For instance, in the new facility, the Postal Service will employ a total of about 550 people, 120 of whom will be responsible for daily maintenance and repair of the machinery, he says.