There are many ways we can point to the success of the Delivering for America® plan, but one of the clearest indicators is the dramatic improvement in our service performance. We can all understand this metric — if a letter or package arrives on time, things are working; if it’s late, there’s a problem. And thanks to the plan, we are showing our customers that things at USPS are working well, and a substantial part of the credit belongs to our enterprise-wide efforts to deploy the power of automation.
Things were very different before Delivering for America, or DFA. Years of financial hardship had made it impossible to adequately invest in our processing facilities. Many locations were neglected, and much of the equipment used to move mail and packages was poorly maintained, ill-suited for the drastic increase in package volume or simply too old to be useful. Too often, we had to resort to manual processing and daily workarounds just to keep our facilities moving, which regularly slowed processing — and our service performance — to a crawl. Something had to change.
Delivering for America was the change we needed. This plan recognizes that our revival can only be achieved if we give our employees the tools and strategies to succeed. At our processing facilities, this meant we needed to take away the heavy lifting and allow our employees to focus on managing the flow of our packages and mail.