Patent Application
20090018977
The present invention relates to the field of mail handling, and it relates more particularly to a method of franking mailpieces that have added-value postal services while avoiding any break in the real processing rate at which the batches of mail are processed.
In order to apply added-value postal services such as registered mail, mail tracking, etc. to mailpieces, it is necessary for the operator of a postage meter or franking machine, i.e. of a franking system of the closed type, to effect various successive manual operations that, in addition to taking time, are frequent sources of error. The operator must firstly stick a label to the mailpiece, that label bearing an identifier (in general, a bar code) of the requested postal service, and then said operator must retrieve the digits corresponding to that code by inputting them into the user interface of the machine, and must match the code with the name of the recipient so as to enable the mailpiece to be tracked, and finally, said operator must input the post code or ZIP code of the recipient. A known way of accelerating this inputting process is to incorporate a scanner into the franking machine. Associated with bar code recognition software, with optical character recognition (OCR) software, and with a national database of addresses, such a scanner makes it possible to automate inputting respectively the identifier, the name of the recipient, and the post code of the recipient.
Unfortunately, although that solution appears, in theory, to be fully “automated”, in practice it is not because, since character recognition is a particularly complex operation, current OCR software, even the best OCR software, has error rates of about 5%. In view of the processing rates existing in a franking machine, such an error rate gives rise to the franking machine being stopped every 20 envelopes, thereby very considerably penalizing the processing time required for treating a batch of mail. In addition, when the address cannot be recognized, in particular in the event that it is absent from the national database or indeed when the address corresponds to an old address that has been deleted from the database but that is still valid because it is present in a change-of-address database of the postal authorities, it is necessary to disable printing of the corresponding mailpiece and to provide a routing system for re-directing it to a specific reject bin for manual processing.
An object of the present invention is to provide a method of franking mailpieces that have added-value postal services without significantly reducing the processing rate at which the mailpieces are processed. Another object of the invention is to perform the processing without any error, without extracting certain mailpieces from the franking machine, and without changing operating modes of the machine.
These objects are achieved by a method of franking mailpieces in a closed franking machine fed from a mixed batch of mailpieces, said method comprising the following steps, for each mailpiece:
Thus, with this direct correction by the user, it is no longer possible for errors to exist in recipient address recognition, and the mailpieces can thus be processed more quickly and thus at lower cost.
In a first variant, when the image displayed on the screen of said user interface is not the image of the recipient's address block, then, by means of a determined function key of said user interface, the user actuates a step of automatically and successively viewing other zones of the digital image of the mailpiece, which other zones might contain said recipient's address block, on said user interface, before performing the step of correcting said at least one item of postal data.
In a second variant, when the image displayed on the screen of said user interface is not the image of the recipient's address block, then, by means of display scroll buttons on said user interface, the user performs a manual step of searching for the recipient's address before performing the step of correcting said at least one item of postal data.
Depending on the application, said at least one item of postal data can be at least one of the following items of postal data: the name of the recipient, the post code of the recipient, and the country of destination.
Preferably, said post code is printed on the mailpiece in the form of a bar code such as the POSTNET code.
Advantageously, each of the mailpieces bears an identifier relating to the added-value postal service desired for said mailpiece. Said identifier comprises a bar code printed on a label stuck to the mailpiece and read by bar code recognition software means of the franking machine, or said identifier is printed on the mailpiece during printing of the postal imprint.
In a particular implementation, the identifier and said at least one item of postal data are stored in a database of the franking machine, and optionally, the image of the mailpiece is also stored therein.
The characteristics and advantages of the present invention appear more clearly from the following description given by way of non-limiting indication and with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which:
The invention proposes to reduce significantly the processing time required for processing mailpieces, in particular those having added-value services (without however being limited to this particular application), and to eliminate the human error that is associated with a fully manual procedure, by implementing a method that can be termed “semi-automatic” and that is applicable to conventional franking machines and in which any envelope placed in the feed module of the franking machine is necessarily franked. In other words, under no circumstances is an envelope extracted from the machine for manual processing. With the invention, errors no longer exist because the transition between the automatic process and the manual process is managed by a specially designed user interface.
In accordance with the invention, this mail handling system further comprises an optical read module 20 having a sensor 20A that is advantageously linear and of the “contact” type, thereby enabling it to be incorporated very well into the machine at low cost, but that is shown outside the module merely for reasons of understanding of the invention. The read module 20 is placed upstream from the dynamic weigh module (although the use of an integrated module at the outlet of the selection module or at the inlet of the weigh module is also quite possible), and it serves to acquire a digital image 22 of the mailpiece and to extract therefrom the identifier relating to the added-value service desired for the mailpiece and the recipient's address borne by the mailpiece. For this purpose, the image acquisition module is associated with bar code recognition and OCR software. In accordance with the invention, the franking machine further comprises an improved user interface 24 with a keyboard 24A making it possible to display, on a screen 24B, all or some of the image of the mailpiece that is scanned in this way and, if necessary, to correct the postal data extracted from said image. The keyboard 24A can be a physical keyboard or a virtual keyboard on the screen 24B which is then advantageously of the touch-sensitive type.
The franking machine can also comprise storage means (not shown) of the database type for storing the image of the envelope that is scanned in this way. The image is associated in the database with the corresponding identifier borne on the mailpiece and with the data extracted from the address of the recipient. Said storage means can advantageously incorporate one or more databases (not shown) containing the list of the addresses of the mailpieces to be sent during a given franking session, and updated while they are being established (e.g. by means of document processing software) or indeed a full list of all of the addresses of the user's contacts (customer database).
The franking method of the invention that is implemented in the above-mentioned franking machine is described more particularly below with reference to
The next steps of the method shown in
As shown in
It should be noted that the user can be assisted in performing the correction step. In particular, when the displayed image is not the image of the recipient's address block, provision is made, by means of a determined function key 38, for a step to be performed in which other zones of the digital image of the mailpiece that might contain the recipient's address block and that were previously located by the search software are viewed automatically and successively (in practice, such zones bear sets of alphanumeric characters). Once the block has been selected, the user can make the correction, as above. Similarly, display scroll keys 40 are provided for shifting the display on said user interface so that, if searching successively through the blocks fails, then a manual search can be made for the recipient's address block, prior to performing, as above, the step of correcting the erroneous postal data, e.g. the name and/or the post code of the recipient.
At the end of the correction step, the identifier, the name, and the post code of the recipient (and optionally also the country of destination) are preferably stored in the database of the franking machine, preferably together with the digital image of the envelope or merely with the digital image of the address corresponding to said envelope. Periodically, and at the latest at the time the mail is collected, the content of said database is sent automatically to the dealer's server which forwards it to the postal authorities' server (or the private carrier's server), or merely makes it available to that server so as to make it possible to perform the mailpiece tracking operations that are associated with the added-value postal service chosen by the sender of the mailpieces. The dealer's server also receives updates from the postal authorities' server on the progress of each mailpiece (e.g. sending pending, sent, etc.). In this way, the sender can connect to the dealer's server (in particular via a Web client) in order to determine the progress of the sender's mailpieces, by making a request either by tracking number, or by recipient name, or indeed by date.
It should be noted that the correction step performed by the user can be limited merely to a correction of the name of the recipient, in particular when the mailpiece bears a bar code such as the POSTNET code. In such circumstances, the extraction of the post code is totally reliable and no manual correction to said post code is then necessary on the keyboard of the user interface. The same applies when the franking machine incorporates one or more address databases and search software that makes it possible to verify that the post code is consistent with the city and optionally with the country of destination. Any errors can be corrected by redundancy between a plurality of fields of the address block.
When said database is a customer database that associates the name of the recipient with the address, it is possible for the search software to verify automatically whether the name of recipient complies. This situation avoids stopping for verification, and makes the process completely automatic if the software recognizes the “name” and “post code” fields in the customer database.
With the invention, in the event of non-recognition, it is no longer necessary to extract the unrecognized envelope from the machine in order to read the address on it, to input the name and the post code on the user interface of the machine, and to re-load the envelope into its feed module after changing the operating mode of the machine (going over from batch processing to standard processing) so that it is franked individually. Displaying the address block directly on the user interface makes it possible to make the necessary correction without changing the operating mode of the machine that resumes operation as before (and thus in the same operating mode) once the correction has been validated. Such a stop for correction does not significantly penalize the mailpiece processing rate which, even with such stops, is considerably higher than in the prior art in which it is necessary for each unrecognized envelope to be processed manually.
It should be noted that the invention is also applicable to tasks other than tracked mail handling and, in particular, when it is necessary to read the elements of the address, e.g. for computing the postage price as a function of the destination (post code or country).
| Number | Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0756386 | Jul 2007 | FR | national |
