AMPC

Automatic Mail Processing Center

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 About AMPC
AMPC Installed by Alcatel Bell, Belgium at a cost
of 20.5 Crores ( approx )
Inaugurated on 29th April,1993 at Mumbai
Consists of :
- 6 Advance Compact Suites
- 2 High Speed Letter Sorting Machines
- 2 Bundle Conveyer Belts
- 8 Check Slip printers
- 3 Bundle Tying Machines
Later on Inaugurated at Chennai also
 Working Of AMPC: Stage 1

• Criteria for Machinable mails:

i. Size, Thickness and Weight
ii. Light coloured envelopes
• Collection of mails
i. No hard, rigid or semi-rigid objects etc.
• Defacing of Machinable mails
• Culling of Non-Machinable mails
 Stage2:
• Bar-coding and Preliminary sorting at
Advanced Compact Suites at an average.
speed of 1849 articles per hour
• Here Pin codes are converted to Bar
codes
• Based on the Bar codes, sensors of the
ACS carry out Preliminary sorting
 Stage 3
• Bar-coded articles are sorted at the
Letter Sorting Machine having 200 bins
at a rate of about 30000 articles per hour
• When a bin is full, a destination label is
generated by the label printer indicating
the name of the destination, routing of
the letter bundle, date and time
 Stage 4
• The bundles are now tied manually, put
in relevant bags and despatched
• The automated Bundle Tying Machines
are no longer used due to high operating
cost
Efforts to increase productivity
• Informing Firms, Companies, etc., about
specifications of machinable mails
• All LB clearances of P.O.s in and around
Mumbai and Chennai are brought to the
respective AMPC
• Plastic trays are supplied to all Mail
Offices and POs to receive machinable
mail
 Contd…….
• Inward Foreign Letter mail diverted to
AMPC, Mumbai from APSO(Fgn)Dadar
• Handling of Outgoing Foreign Letter mails
also attached to AMPC since Feb.’96
• To motivate the staff ,some incentive schemes
are currently being promoted:
i. Coders attaining a speed of 1500 articles per
hour are given a memento; those attaining
speed of 2000 articles per hour gets cash
award of Rs.500/-;those attaining a speed of
2500 articles per hour consistently in a month
get Rs.1000/-
 Contd….
ii. The 5 fastest coders (ranked monthly)
are given duty in the general set
between 0930 and 1730 hours.
iii. An official doing duty in the night set
for 10 days continuously gets 20 days
off
 Problems

• During defacing stage, there was a

problem with the dye and alignment of
the articles
• Incorrect Bar-coding leading to more
rejects in the LSM
• Problems due to dark coloured
envelopes, stapled articles and right
opening covers etc
Advantages and future prospects

• Mail sorting is faster, more accurate and

re-handling occurs very infrequently
• Articles sorted in machines take less
transit time as these are sorted in detail
• LBs for Bulk Mailers/Postbox holders
receiving more mail are prepared and
sent to POs for delivery directly
 Contd…..
• Presently AMPC handles about 2.5-3 lakh
machinable mails per day. Efforts are on to
increase this figure to 4 lakhs or more
• Culling machines are required since feeding to
ACS is fully dependent on availability of culled
mail
• The Optical Character Recognition system to
read and recognize both printed and
handwritten addresses and pin codes will
improve the performance of AMPC