As digitalization progresses, almost every postal operator faces a shift in demand for its services: letter volumes are declining sharply, while parcel volumes are growing given the rising popularity of e‑commerce. For postal operators, this presents the dual challenge of remaining profitable despite falling letter volumes, while handling increasing parcel traffic efficiently. To maintain reliable and efficient delivery services in the face of these challenges, Posti, the Finnish postal operator, has partnered with the Escher Group, a UPU Consultative Committee member, to enhance its use of optical character recognition (OCR) and advance its automation processes.
Through Escher’s AI-powered OCR technology, Posti has been able to automate the reading and sorting of mail and parcels. Even handwritten addresses and notes on packages can now be read digitally. A fuzzy matching address lookup engine enhances automatic sequencing and reduces the volume of mail requiring manual intervention owing to low-quality or incomplete addressee information. If an item cannot be processed automatically, Escher’s video coding system comes into play. This system complements the OCR and address-matching processes and improves over time using deep-learning technology. Sorting efficiency is further increased through round-stop ordering, meaning that over 90% of mail is automatically sorted into the order of delivery routes. (....)