Background
As part of the Delivering for America 10-year plan, the U.S. Postal Service is making significant investments in Regional Processing and Distribution Centers (RP&DCs) to modernize its network. The goal of this initiative is to standardize and modernize mail and package processing and improve service reliability and cost efficiency across the nation. The Postal Service opened one RP&DC in calendar year 2023 and is projecting to open about 60 through calendar year 2028. With the implementation of these new facilities nationwide, it will be important for the Postal Service to have a standardized process to relocate mail processing equipment timely and verify accurate accountability of its assets.
What We Did
Our objective was to evaluate the Postal Service’s process for relocating machines and determine whether it’s prepared to move equipment as part of planned network changes.
What We Found
The Postal Service developed a process for mail processing machine relocation to support the planned network changes and has already relocated some mail processing equipment. However, they are at risk of not being prepared to quickly implement planned relocations. Specifically, local management was not uniformly aware of roles and responsibilities or consistently applying the process for relocated mail processing machines and equipment. We determined required records were missing in a Postal Service information system to both document mail processing equipment relocations and to enable timely reconnection of the equipment to support mail processing. Additionally, we found mail processing equipment did not have capital property identification labels affixed as required by policy.
Recommendations
We recommended management (1) update processes and checklist to incorporate the accurate roles and responsibilities for the machine relocation process; (2) document the updated process and checklist in AS-701 and Postal Handbook; (3) develop a process to communicate clear and consistent procedures, including roles and responsibilities, on the machine relocation process; and (4) verify all relocated mail processing equipment has an accurate capital property identification label affixed.
