Postal code, most people only know that it is a few Arabic numerals, but few people pay attention to whether it has an impact on the development of postal services and how big it is.
Over the years, under the systematic planning of the re-export bureau, the current postal communication network has been formed. In the mid-1980s, postal codes began to be widely implemented nationwide, and some large and medium-sized cities began to realize the automation of postal mail sorting. Some people reluctantly took the initiative to write a few numbers and threw the letter into the mailbox. However, because the machine sorts letters by identifying their codes and specifications, an unqualified letter often has to travel north and south. Although the letter reached the other party, the post office has paid several times of labor for it.
With the rapid growth of business volume and the wide application of postal mechanization, the automatic sorting of letters has become an important problem that needs to be solved urgently. However, experts believe that the current postal code restricts the development of modern postal services and makes the development of postal services present several major misunderstandings:
One of the misunderstandings is that the rapid growth of business volume and the low labor productivity of enterprises coexist. In recent years, with the acceleration of economic development, the postal business volume has shown a steady and high-speed growth trend, and the average growth rate of postal business volume in China is above 20%. However, postal production has been organized for decades, and an ordinary letter has to go through more than 20 procedures from delivery to delivery, and the sorting times are as high as seven or eight times, which leads to low labor productivity of postal enterprises. Xin Ping, located in the Pearl River Delta, has an average annual growth rate of 25.6%, but its labor productivity of 1.998 is only 1.475 million yuan.
The second misunderstanding is that postal mechanization and postal coding can not adapt to development. At present, 63% of the 236 central offices in China are equipped with an automatic letter sorting system, which realizes the automation of letter sorting. However, because the country's postal code positioning still uses the coding mode under the entrepot system, some areas are short of postal code resources, and the efficiency of mechanized automatic sorting has not really been brought into play.
The third misunderstanding is that the rapid expansion of enterprise production scale and email aging can not meet the needs of users. With the rapid development of business volume and the rapid expansion of enterprise scale, under the six-digit code, the central codes of most branches can only be arranged to the county bureau or the delivery branch, but not to the delivery section, which limits the subdivision of the sorting machine and requires a large number of people to manually sort the mail for the second or even the third time, which artificially prolongs the delivery time of the mail. It is not difficult to imagine that if the sorting function can sort all the letters delivered in the postal area at one time and cancel the sorting and sealing function of counties and sub-bureaus (towns), it will not only give full play to the investment benefit of equipment, but also optimize the operation organization, simplify the mail processing link and save the secondary sorting, thus greatly shortening the mail delivery time.
Undoubtedly, for most central offices, the six-digit code limits the degree of machine subdivision, and it is impossible to achieve sorting to the delivery section at one time, which not only makes the sorting machine unable to exert its maximum effectiveness, but also artificially prolongs the delivery time of mail. If the postal service does not get out of this misunderstanding, not only will the postal mechanization become an armchair strategist, but it will certainly affect the enterprise and social benefits of the postal service.
Innovation: coding upgrade, one-time sorting to delivery
Dongguan, located in the Pearl River Delta, was a small county-level city 15 years ago. The vigorous development of local economy has injected a powerful catalyst into the great development of postal service. Statistics show that from 1984 to 1998, the average annual growth of several major businesses in Dongguan reached 2 1.62%, 28.83% and 30.09% respectively, and the proportion of letters, parcels and remittances in the whole province reached about 10%. Compared with 30 provincial capital post offices in China, 1994 ranks 13th in domestic mail volume and fifth in per capita mail volume. During the period of 1998, the average daily mail volume reached 524,000 pieces, which made Dongguan Post firmly sit in the third place of Guangdong Post.
Due to the restriction of county-level double-digit postal code under the re-export system, Dongguan has been using manual mail processing, and the huge business volume makes it impossible for Dongguan Post to shorten the delivery time of mail. There are as many as 3,000 bags of parcels in the peak period, and a letter can reach Dongguan users in as little as three days and as many as seven days. Users complained about this. Although the central office system makes it possible for Dongguan Post to be mechanized, insiders find that the county-level two-digit postal code and sorting and sealing system formed under the re-export system are incompatible with the postal mechanization. As far as Dongguan is concerned, there are 32 town bureaus and 555 delivery sections in urban and rural areas. The postal business volume of 32 town bureaus in 1998 is above1000000 yuan, reaching or exceeding the scale of general county bureaus. From the future, Dongguan is adjacent to Hong Kong and Macao and is developing into an international metropolis. However, under the re-export system, the postal code of Dongguan is only two digits, which means that Dongguan only has the code of 100. In other words, the import sorting grid can only be set to the township delivery bureau, which seriously restricts the setting of the import grid of the sorting machine and the display of sorting efficiency. According to estimates, if Dongguan follows the traditional two-digit coding system, the daily average business volume of each grid is as high as 3,000 pieces, and the amount of manual secondary sorting is huge. However, if the coding capacity allows mail to be sorted to the delivery section at one time, the average processing capacity of each section is only 4 19 pieces. The backward coding method has become the shackles of postal mechanization.
How to solve this contradiction? Five years ago, Dongguan Bureau broke away from convention and devoted itself to the research of postal code upgrading and internal operation organization optimization. Some insiders suggested that Dongguan's self-coding was upgraded from two to three. The new coding not only codes the delivery section, but also some factories, mines, enterprises and resident troops implement special coding to realize one-time sorting to the delivery section. According to the survey, based on the current business volume of Dongguan Bureau, this will save 52 postal workers and 859 square meters of production space, save 1.6 million yuan for enterprises every year, and shorten the delivery time of letters by one day.
There is no doubt that the automatic sorting of letters into segments will become the locomotive to promote the optimization of postal internal operation organization, and postal code is the basis of postal mechanization and efficiency. With the rapid growth of business volume and the improvement of postal modernization, the leading position of postal code in postal development is constantly improving, and its leading role will become more and more obvious. One-time sorting to delivery department will be the inevitable trend of postal development. To this end, the person in charge of the relevant parties put forward that it is extremely urgent to make full use of the existing postal code resources and carry out the research on postal code supplement.
Relocation: sorting to households, with one yard for each local mailbox.
With the continuous popularization and promotion of postal mechanization, the internal operation organization of postal service will undergo fundamental changes. Obviously, there are all kinds of unreasonable situations in the existing six-digit coding: there are few codes, which limit the subdivision degree of sorting machines and lead to low efficiency of enterprises. Some people predict that it will not last long, and put forward that one yard per household is the way out.
In fact, the brewing of postal code reform has already begun. During the period of 1997, the business of business letter was started, the general subscription of newspapers and periodicals was started one after another in Shenzhen and other places, the mail order business was fully rolled out throughout the country, and the postal "household box project" entered the implementation stage in some large and medium-sized cities. There are various indications that it is inevitable to realize local mailbox coding.
For this kind of local mailbox coding method with one code per household and one address and one code, the insiders believe that the first is the inevitability of information development. Postal code can be used to establish a highly reliable and accurate postal address database. With this database, it is convenient to realize the computer-aided operation of all links of postal services and to implement computer management for postal users. Especially with the start of newspaper subscription, mail order business, business letters, advertising information processing and network production, postal code, as an important supporting measure, is also ready to be reformed.
Secondly, with the growth of business volume, the "bottleneck" of data entry is becoming more and more prominent. Mailbox coding can speed up the processing time of mail, help standardize and standardize the postal delivery environment in urban and rural areas, and improve the appropriate delivery rate of mail.
Third, one yard per household and sorting to each household can optimize the production organization and greatly improve the labor productivity of all employees.
Where will the postal code reform begin? It is reported that Dongguan Bureau's position on the postal code reform is: before the national postal code upgrade, the postal code will be implemented in this postal area, one for each household and one for each address; Coding keeps certain rules, which can not only identify districts, towns, streets and communities, but also distinguish some major social organizations. The mailbox coding will adopt the method of three plus four.
In fact, in order to handle mail efficiently and reduce the production cost of enterprises, postal mechanization in developed countries has gradually replaced manual processing, and the application of mechanization has made postal code reform in developed countries a reality. The postal code of the United States has been adjusted twice, from the initial 5 digits to 1 1 digits. The coded numbers are distributed to large postal areas, postal regional central offices, general post offices, buildings, blocks, families, etc. Machines can be classified into households according to the invoice. The postal code of February 1998 in Japan has also been raised from 3-digit code and 5-digit code to 7-digit code, which simplifies the sorting of branches by delivery segment. The sorting system of sequential segmentation makes the sorting and transportation of Japan Post enter the fast lane. It is said that the mail in most parts of Japan has been delivered the next day, and the mail delivery will not exceed three days at the latest. According to this, people concerned believe that China is a vast country, and its postal code will rise to 9 ~ 1 1.
If sorting to delivery section at one time is the beginning of postal coding reform, it is a more beneficial attempt to code local mailboxes in postal areas. With the continuous development of postal service, upgrading postal code to one household and one yard will be the ultimate ownership of postal code reform in China.
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