Predictive Mail Tracking
June 21, 2018   Dave Lewis

Not just “Is it there yet?”, but “When will it be there?” The benefits of mail tracking have remained largely unchanged since 1999 when the original mail tracking barcode, the PLANET code, was released.  The big selling points were anticipating – and staffing for – response; coordinating other marketing channels; providing evidence of delivery for mail service providers; and identifying and rectifying issues in the USPS delivery network. As the Postal Service has enhanced the mail tracking data it provides through a number of iterations – CONFIRM, Intelligent Mail barcodes, IMb Tracing, and now Informed Visibility(IV) – the main functionality has remained the same:  report on the location and activity of mail pieces as they travel through sortation equipment.  All of the reporting was largely in the past or present tense – we couldn’t do much to predict the future. As IV continues to evolve, there are new predictive tools on the very close horizon that may add significantly to the capabilities of mail tracking. IV still tracks mail pieces as they go through sorting equipment.  That much hasn’t changed at all.  But IV also provides tracking of pallets of mail – and trays, and sacks, and bundles.  Even when a tray, sack, or bundle are moved to a new container, IV continues to track it – even in its new container.  Best of all, IV “assumes” these scans down to the piece record level, so when a pallet of mail is scanned as it is loaded on a truck, that scan is distributed to all of the pieces on that pallet as an “assumed” scan event.  All of this assuming provides a much more complete view of the travels of a piece of mail. Another potential benefit of tracking containers and handling units and relating that data to the piece level is the ability to predict delivery a few days out.  Informed Visibility offered a first vision of this with the addition of the Predicted Delivery Date (PDD) field to the scan data they provide.  Currently, this field is less fabulous than it sounds.  It is only assigned to pieces that are in their final process – a “Stop the Clock” event, and due to be delivered no later than the next day.  This isn’t particularly helpful – we can already kind of figure that out. This summer, though, the PDD will be renamed and revised to be populated on the first scan event of a mail piece, and then delivery will be predicted based on published service standards for the particular class of mail.  Now that’s kind of interesting.  The new name will be the Estimated Delivery Date (EDD).  Thus, when a pallet is inducted at, say, an SCF, an assumed scan will be created for all of the pieces on it, and included in that scan data will be a EDD based on the service standard from that SCF to delivery.  This should provide valuable information on mail delivery days before it happens.  We’re waiting to see the data before getting too excited, but it is a very promising prospect.  The old PDD data will be renamed the Anticipated Delivery Date (ADD).  Seriously. But wait!  There’s more! In the not-too-distant future the PDD will be back!  The new and improved PDD will be similar to EDD (I mean they both have a DD in them), but EDD will also take into account network delays, and actual travel times being observed in mail delivery.  No date has been announced for this enhancement, but they’ve already got the initials – how long can it take?  It is expected by the end of the USPS fiscal year –September 30. These new data points may give mailers the opportunity to better plan their staffing days ahead of time and – best of all – to coordinate other channels to arrive before the mail, as well as after it.  While there is certainly work to be done, the Postal Service has been continually enhancing Informed Visibility and providing better data than we could have hoped for.  We don’t have an EDD for the new PDD yet, but the PDD for the improved PDD is this summer.  We predict exciting new possibilities for mailers! P.S.  Hard to imagine, but I may have oversimplified (?) this a little bit.  Here’s the preliminary working from an upcoming USPS data dictionary:

Predicted Delivery Date (PDD)	IV calculated date that predicts when the mailpiece is likely to go out for delivery based on historical and recent service performance data for that mail profile (mail class and shape) for that origin and destination pair.  It will be calculated when the first manifest or scan is available to IV and updated with a revised prediction for each subsequent visibility event.
Anticipated Delivery Date (ADD)	IV calculated date that indicates when the mailpiece will be out for delivery based on the expected last processing scan (or last mile operations scan) for that 5 digit mail class and shape.  It will not be calculated prior to a finalized scan occurring.
Expected Delivery Date (EDD)	IV calculated date that indicates when the mailpiece is expected to be delivered.  This date is determined based on the published origin entry and destination entry service standards.  We will provide the LAST date of the service standard pair.  This will be a static date based on the start the clock event to the origin and destination 3 digit pair

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