The U.S. Postal Service considers mail to be delayed when it is not processed in time to meet the established delivery day. Delayed mail can adversely affect U.S. Postal Service customers and harm the organization’s brand.

The Postal Service launched the Mail Condition Visualization (MCV) system in January 2019. The application’s intent is to provide near real-time visibility of a facility’s on-hand volume, delayed inventory volume, delayed dispatch volume, and oldest mail date by mail category and processing operation. MCV receives data from handheld devices used in mail processing operations, Surface Visibility scans, and mailer documentation. The MCV application calculates delayed mail inventory daily by determining the number of mailpieces that have not received their next expected processing operation scan by 6:59 a.m. for destinating final processing operations and by 6:00 a.m. for all other operations.

Two important processing operations are the Managed Mail Program and Delivery Point Sequence (DPS). Mail originating from one mail processing facility that requires additional processing at a destinating facility before delivery is part of the Managed Mail Program. Once managed mail is processed, it is prepared for DPS, which is an automated process of sorting mail into delivery order by carrier routes. DPS requires sorting the mail twice, with the first pass used to scan the addresses and the second pass to sort the mail to the sector, segment, or carrier walk sequence.

We analyzed delayed inventory volumes from mail processing facilities nationwide as reported in MCV and found the Phoenix, AZ, Processing and Distribution Center (P&DC) ranked as the second highest for both delayed inventory and processed volume from January 1, 2020, to January 31, 2021.

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Source: USPS Office of Inspector General