RMCtv : Can anyone explain how an offices workload can 'accurately' be predicted months in advance so as to designate whether it's Low/High peak.

[POSTMAN]

OPG

Can anyone explain how an offices workload can "accurately" be predicted months in advance so as to designate whether it's Low/High peak. BUT an office can't be informed in advance that they are going to be receiving 2 bulk postings increasing that days workload to 5/6 times more than usual.

DS Applications Support &Improvement Mgr at Royal Mail Group

There are two separate processes in use here. The Low/High/Peak is based on a number of years of Workload History ( Hours required to run an office ). These periods don't tend to change from Year to Year and are used at a high level to define what is the starting point for Resourcing Discussions. These periods in themselves won't give you the exact hours required to run an office, but should mean that offices have less gaps to both High and Low points and less requirement to lapse or use pressure or OT.

In terms of detailed Forecasting and what actually arrives into offices is a bit more complicated. Firstly we have Long Term Forecasts, which cover from 3 weeks out to a number of years away. These Traffic Forecasts are based on a number of Factors, these include previous years history, current economic outlook and Intelligence from our customers about their intentions ( Which are also "Forecasts" ).

Once we get down to an office level and what happens in the next 1-3 weeks or on the day it is even more difficult to get it 100% correct. Any forecast will be built around the same basic principles, but are subject to a greater level of change. A good example will be council postings, our historic forecast will include anything they posted last year, so they may have posted out all their bills in week 51, but this year they decide to post in week 52 instead, that would mean our forecast would be over for week 51 and under for week 52.

Even though our account teams work very closely with our big posters and feed back as much as they can, things often change last minute and contractually there is no obligation on customers to tell us. There is a lot of focus and effort on improving what we do in this area as the business knows how critical this is to Quality, Costs and what we expect of our front line staff.

In terms of seeing work come into the pipeline and then tracking that through RDC.s/International then into a MC and to A D.O is a challenge, it is being worked on, but as we don't always know the F2E ( What D.O it will hit ) it's not always possible to let individual offices know, YET, but hopefully something we'll be able to do in the future.

[ted_e_bear]

Well we got hammered today with an election related bulk mailing, in an identical manner to every previous time this has happened it appeared as if by magic, no prior communication to the managers whatsoever

[RHONE]

I think it's a brand new it system I believe there calling it Horizon 2.0

[Philbag70]

I thought it was just, 'guess the figures but try and make it look like you know what you're doing'....

[kazardaimenu]

Tea leaves. Then managers act like there’s nothing wrong when bulk mail gets dumped on everyone on a Tuesday.

[oypostie]

and there was me thinking their estimates are total guesswork

[scotchy1962]

Tea leaves. Then managers act like there’s nothing wrong when bulk mail gets dumped on everyone on a Tuesday.

Used to be written on the back of a fag packet, i guess that's progress for you.

[CarryingMGMT]

Tea leaves. Then managers act like there’s nothing wrong when bulk mail gets dumped on everyone on a Tuesday.

Used to be written on the back of a fag packet, i guess that's progress for you.

...with a blue crayon

[rubberbond]

Well we got hammered today with an election related bulk mailing, in an identical manner to every previous time this has happened it appeared as if by magic, no prior communication to the managers whatsoever

Same here , plus some other bulk posting that appeared as if by magic. It must be costing a fortune in pressure overtime if that’s your thing, or causing issues with cut offs , as nobody appears to want overtime anymore to clear cut offs. Can’t think why.

[rubberbond]

I thought it was just, 'guess the figures but try and make it look like you know what you're doing'....

Whatever gives you the impression they look like they know what they’re doing.

[Philbag70]

I thought it was just, 'guess the figures but try and make it look like you know what you're doing'....

Whatever gives you the impression they look like they know what they’re doing.

Yes, sorry about that. No idea where that crazy notion came from....it crossed my mind in the desperate hope that they do know. However, Its quite clear they're clueless!

[broughts]

With dsa mail they don’t know what’s coming in from the mailing houses could be one tray or York could be a 100 it’s just figures for someone to push around and explain nothing

[mafiaman]

Think letter volumes can be say 80% correct but you do get bulk mail water , election, council letters don't think you can really predict parcels especially next day. and there's always times when walks are not the same volume you pretty much work day to day

[SpacePhoenix]

Think they look at the figures for the same financial year week over the preceding years, to see what the trend is. Then I believe they add or take off so many items from the previous years.