First Class Service

Processing some 75,000 pieces of mail a day, University of Washington Publications Services is one of the country's busiest university mailing operations.

When the Huskies went to the Rose Bowl in January, University of Washington Publications Services faced the ultimate time-sensitive project.

"Printing and mailing ticket applications for a championship sporting event is completely last-minute. You have to wait until the end of the season, and the team wins, then 'Boom!' You have a matter of days to get the information in the mail," explains Frank Davis, associate director of Publications Services. "We have people on standby to mail the applications for tickets to season ticket holders."

Fortunately for Davis—and all those season ticket holders—UW has one of the top in-plants in the country. In fact, it ranked 10th on the most recent IPG Top 50.

With a staff of 160 full-time and 80 part-time (student) employees serving in four separate service areas (Copy Services, Printing Services, Mailing Services, and Client and Creative Services) the in-plant has the resources—all under one roof—to handle such complex and time-sensitive jobs.

Previously located in three buildings, the four service branches merged into one mega operation in 1989 and are now located in the same facility, under the same director, Eric Mosher.

As associate director, Davis was the team leader when Mailing Services was reengineered in 1995. The massive project, which lasted more than a year and involved some $800,000 in new equipment, centered on improving and automating Mailing Services.

Processing and delivering mail to 38,000 students and 18,000 staff members—across 600-plus acres that includes two medical centers and three satellite campuses—Mailing Services has one of the most critical responsibilities of any university department.

"Mailing Services is one of the few departments at the university to deal with virtually every department on campus," Davis contends. "Everyone needs mail."

Customers include the university's 600 academic departments, its administration offices and its two medical centers—not to mention its students. Client mail ranges from grants and research data to fund-raising and academic information.

"Mailing Services contributes to the mission of the university," Davis continues. "We provide essential elements to keep the university operating on a daily basis, processing about 75,000 pieces of incoming/outgoing mail each day"—or 1.6 million items per month.

Handle With Care

Despite the volume, Mailing Services prides itself on its careful handling of each piece of mail. To ensure successful mailings, Davis says, a lot of collaboration goes on between departments.

"Designers work closely with mailing to make sure the layout is the right size, that the positioning of the address is correct, etc.," says Davis, who defines a successful mailing as when an item mails quickly and accurately, and with maximum discounts for postage. In contrast, he says, an unsuccessful mailing is one that is rejected by the United States Postal Service because something is not positioned right, or an address isn't recognized or accepted by the USPS.

"In mail prep, we work with clients in advance to get e-files of addresses for mailing," he explains. "Then we certify the addresses with a database from USPS. Addresses are certified, then the address and bar code are sprayed on." Pieces come out sorted in ZIP+4 order.

The optical character reader/bar code reader (OCR/BCR) looks up preaddressed mail, certifies addresses, sprays on a bar code, sorts it in ZIP code order, and it goes to the post office.

"By going through all these steps—by bar coding with the address, presorting and adding the ZIP plus 4—we save the client money in postage," Davis explains. "When we deliver it to the post office, the post office says, 'OK. This is ready to go to L.A., or wherever.' It's ready to go because we've already done all the work for them."

From Antiquated To Modern

Previously, Mailing Services was doing labeling and inserting with equipment that was more than 25 years old. Since the 1995 automation, however—and the improvements made over the past six years—the department has been completely re-engineered. Davis, a 28-year veteran of Publications Services, says the university spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on sophisticated mailing equipment, including the OCR/BCR and ink-jet addressing equipment.

At a whopping 35 feet long, the Lockheed Martin OCR/BCR handles 20,000 pieces of mail per hour, verifying pre-addressed information and spraying on bar codes before mailing.

"It has a database of every address in America—125 million addresses—on CD-ROM," Davis reports. "We also use Fast Forward software from the USPS for address changes. For example, if someone moves and turns in a change-of-address card, the machine knows this and sprays on the new bar code with the new address."

According to Mail Manager Bobbie Jo Bay, Fast Forward is becoming a requirement.

"You either have to put return service [and pay for returned mail], or you subscribe to Fast Forward," she says. "Fast Forward has all the new change-of-address info and sprays on the new address. This saves work for the postal service, and it saves the university in postage. The postal service gives us a discount because we're doing the work up front."

Much of the work is done up front via the OCR/BCR and ink-jet equipment, which, as Bay explains, allows Mailing Services to perform CASS/address certification.

"Our clients bring us address lists and files, and we process the info through the software before it goes to ink jet. Then everything comes out presorted," she says. "The OCR and ink-jet equipment work hand-in-hand, with the OCR reading and verifying pre-addressed mail [and mail with a change of address], and the ink-jet spraying on addresses for mail that isn't pre-addressed."

Substantial Savings

By bar coding and sorting mail in this way, Mailing Services saves clients money—lots of money. Davis reports that $27,000 per month (or $324,000 annually) is saved in postage, most of which is passed back to UW departments. The seven Pitney Bowes metering units (with bar code readers) are used to charge back postage to clients.

"We preprint bar codes for every department on their envelopes," Davis explains. "We also furnish peel-off labels for envelopes that aren't preprinted. The department's budget number is printed on the bar code, and the bar code reader verifies that it's an active account, then charges the postage back to the department."

UW spends about $4.2 million annually on postage, and the automated metering, bar coding and sorting equipment is helping to save about 6¢ per first class letter.

Money is also saved by using postal incentives.

"A big one is International Priority Airmail," says Bay. "Because we're a central receiver, we [consolidate] the mail, and presort it and deliver it that way. When it shows up already sorted, it saves the post office money. They pass that savings onto us, and we pass [most of] it back to the departments."

With a state-funded budget of $1 million (which is totally separate from Publications Services' self-sustaining annual budget of $16.8 million), Mailing Services only charges clients for prep work, such as bulk mailing of brochures or catalogs, inserting, ink-jet addressing, tabbing, etc. The cost of sorting, processing and delivering incoming and outgoing campus mail is not charged back to the client. Mailing Services' state-funded budget covers the expense.

Special Delivery

Speaking of delivery, with some 600 box numbers on campus, it takes eight step vans, one cargo van and a truck to deliver the mail. Most buildings have dedicated mail rooms, where mail drivers drop off incoming mail and pick up outgoing. Each department is responsible for distributing mail throughout its department. Drivers don't hand-deliver mail, says Bay. But 30 years ago, she adds, that might have been the case.

"In those days, Mailing Services was a little mail room outfit in the basement of the administration building," she says. "My, how things have changed."

Today, Mailing Services' staff of 43 full-time and 12 part-time (student) employees operate modern technology in a three-story building dedicated solely to Publications Services. Mailing, shipping and receiving are on the first floor, printing is on the second, and client services/administration is on the third. In addition to its arsenal of automated equipment, the department is increasing its Web presence by providing mailing services online.

"We're a vital communications link to the university," Bay says. "And, we're especially vital when you consider what flows in and out of the university and medical centers—everything from transcripts to patient reports, to...donor contributions and research grants. Any given night, we have people in here who have to get their grants to various destinations worldwide. We help them solve their problems and accomplish their missions.

"We're the mail experts," Bay concludes. "We know all that our clients never need to know."

For example, how all those Huskies Rose Bowl ticket applications arrived in mailboxes in time for the big game. Behind the scenes, UW's printing and mailing team was hard at work, getting the job done.

by Cheryl Adams

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Campus Conversion

Since Mailing Services was automated back in 1995, the University of Washington has invested $800,000 in state-of-the-art technology. But it took more than just equipment to update the operation. Hundreds of out-of-date campus addresses had to be changed.

"Mailing Services was using alpha-numeric addresses that weren't recognized by the USPS," says Frank Davis, associate director of Publications Services. "We spent a year-plus working with the post office converting the old addresses to six-digit box numbers that are recognized by the USPS international data base. When we changed the [600 campus box numbers], we worked closely with 50 pilot groups. These pilot groups were the first departments to be converted to new addresses.

"For example, the School of Business is huge and has a tremendous amount of mail," he continues. "We provided the school with change-of-address cards. Then we worked with school staff to order new business cards and envelopes with the new addresses." Bar codes were put on envelopes to charge the postage back to the department.

Soon Mailing Services was inundated with calls from other departments, Davis says, asking when they were going to be updated.

"We had to teach them to prepare addresses for ink-jetting. We had to convert their addresses. We had to work with purchasing and computing and communications. All the fields on the computers, all the purchasing screens, and the accounting systems had to be reconfigured," Davis says. "We had a schedule to convert departments, about 25 to 50 per week. We have 600 mail stops, and we did the final change of addresses for all mail stops over the course of one [academic] quarter."

While all the addresses were changed in a few months, the conversion took several years (and is still taking place). According to Davis, much of the old material had alpha-numeric addresses, which had to run concurrently with the new six-digit addresses, so mail was running on dual systems with both addresses, as it was being converted. Half the mail had new addresses, half had the old addresses. While most of the alpha-numeric addresses have been converted, remnants of the old addresses remain, requiring the dual systems to still be run today.

"We worked with our employees to come up with new box numbers," says Davis, who headed the project. "We went to see new equipment." Three people were sent to Tulsa, Okla., and three went to Chicago to learn to operate and maintain the OCR and ink-jet equipment.

"We had teams working on new addresses, and teams working with new equipment," he says. "It took a tremendous team effort to pull this off."

Additionally, clients had to be taught how to use ink jet, so classes were given. Up to 30 people at a time, from various departments, were taught how to prepare electronic files to be submitted for ink-jet addressing.

"In the past," says Davis, "it was old-fashioned slap-on labels. Now it's all electronic."