I thought we had probably seen our last DMM revisions for 2010 when there were NINE in that last bulletin, but today's final update of 2010 includes a couple more. The USPS has refiled a couple incentive programs that were proposed in the July rate case filing, one for "reply rides free" and another for saturation and high density incentives.
The other DMM revision has been in the works for a while - the addition of a new L006 labeling list of 5DG schemes for Flats Sequencing System (FSS) bundle preparation. Today's Postal Bulletin defines the format of the table and the initial content, and I expect that content may be fairly variable for a while, until the USPS has deployed all the FSS machines and they decide they're happy with their locations! Until now we've been working with the USPS as they get this information set up, building copies of our directory tables from spreadsheets of shifting formats, so having the table format defined will be helpful to the process of building the directories.
Right now the number of facilities set up to accept FSS preparation is small (maybe 5, judging by the table?), but that's expected to increase as they deploy something like 100 of those machines in 47 sites across the country. Those deployments are planned to be in larger metro areas (searching for "USPS FSS deployment" turns up a RIBBS page that has spreadsheets of the deployment plan info, if you're interested).
Presort's January directories will include this table, and the new Presort SP06 release supports preparation of FSS bundles on pallets. Just be aware that even if you plan to make FSS bundles, it seems to take a fairly significant amount of mail for the FSS areas to create the newly defined pallet levels. Also, as with any time you turn on additional preparation levels, there's the possibility that mail going to a new level causes an old level to be reduced enough that it no longer qualifies. As just one example, if you have enough mail to make an FSS facility pallet for Dulles, that could pull enough mail away from an NDC level pallet so that it no longer has enough weight to qualify, causing some additional mail to fall to sacks. Just be sure to compare results closely with what you previously got when you start to experiment with the FSS levels!
So that's it for Postal Bulletin updates for 2010. Here's wishing you all a Happy New Year in 2011!
