Post Room Service Improvement

Our client is responsible for Post Room Services at a large headquarters in London. They had seen a significant increase in complaints for parcels not being delivered on time and were fined a substantial amount of money for undelivered mail. This had caused significant financial, legal and customer reputation impacts. Traditional methods of addressing these delays proved ineffective, requiring a deeper dive into the underlying processes.

CI Projects were commissioned to undertake a Lean Six Sigma review specifically targeting the Post Room operations. Utilising the DMAIC methodology, we embarked on a five-phase journey: Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve and Control. During this process, we worked closely with a few internal stakeholders and coached them in undertaking parts of the analysis to increase their participation, ownership and to help upskill them.

Upon review, we identified an average of 84 days delay between receipt of parcels and delivery of parcels (approximately 3 months). Root causes include contractual ambiguity, instability and lack of training within the post room delivery team, lack of clear processes and procedures and misaligned expectations. There were also large volumes of post being received that should have been re-directed to another office, causing unnecessary over-processing.

We worked closely with the client team to implement solutions and as a result, we achieved:

• Reduced delivery time by 98%: The implemented solutions significantly improved mail delivery speed, exceeding the established target for improvement.
• Increased experience: Faster mail delivery improved internal communication and workflow, leading to increased employee and customer satisfaction and productivity.
• Cost savings: By reducing wasted time and streamlining processes, our client achieved significant cost savings in their post room operations.