The Postal Industry

Postal administrations and their customers are facing increasing challenges, including electronic alternatives to conventional mail, changes in consumer and business communications practices, increased competition in profitable market segments, demands for improved services at lower costs, changes in government regulation, and the trend towards privatization. At the same time, the ongoing challenges of operating a complex retail, mail processing, transportation, and delivery enterprise must also be met.

Postal Industry Services Fact Sheet

ICF International provides solutions to the Postal Industry at all levels. By joining with the postal expertise from Arthur D. Little, Inc., in 2002 through an acquisition, ICF International's postal specialists:

• Supported the design of the Long-Life Vehicle
• Helped create the Corporate Automation Plan
• Designed the National Change of Address System concept
• Designed, developed, and patented the national compressed address directory for the U.S. Postal Service (USPS)
• Designed automated vending equipment and electronic kiosks
• Supported USPS innovation in international business
• Authored the first USPS environmental management plan
• Developed the design of an electronic Delivery Confirmation system
• Designed and developed USPS operations and learning centers
• Managed development that led to effective reading of handwritten addresses
• Implemented Customer Relationship Management techniques in the USPS
• Developed electronic interfaces to reduce major mailer paperwork
• Oversaw the design, development, and testing of equipment for the Integrated Processing Facility of the future
• Performed cost benefit analysis and performance measurement studies for a number of retail and customer service initiatives
• Performed a best practices study of the operating procedures of the Business Service Network centers

ICF International continues to partner with postal practices in other countries to make its long experience serving the U.S. Postal Service easily available to foreign postal services.

Areas of particular expertise include:

• Mail sorting technologies—feeders, mechanisms; letters, flats, bulk; system requirements
• Material handling—systems, process control, robot and storage and retrieval technologies
• Imaging—recognition, processing
• ID technology/unit load tracking—barcodes, radio frequency identification (RFID), smart cards, scanners/readers/printers
• Explosives detection equipment—technology, implementation
• Biological threat—detection technology, testing, system implementation
• Data collection—USPS databases, large-scale field studies, interviews/focus groups, equipment testing
• Analysis—discrete event simulation, time-slice spreadsheet, data analysis, cost-benefit and risk, multivariate

This background allows ICF International to help postal administrations meet their challenges and manage the changes induced by the rapidly evolving postal marketplace.