IPC Performance Centre
The IPC Performance Centre is a platform for international postal operations managers, providing a centralized way to obtain critical quality of service information, thereby enabling managers to reduce the number of bilateral contacts needed.
The Centre provides member support in enhancing quality of service by doing the following:
Monitoring Quality of Service
The Performance Centre monitors daily international mail movements – using CAPE Vision – to ensure that short-term problems are detected and fixed before they affect long-term postal performance.
The Centre also manages the IPC Sprinter Network, the IPC Tray Pool, and the IPC Bag Pool.
Providing a Quality Upgrading and Communication Platform
The Centre hosts regular telephone conferences on operational issues so that member posts can identify and address any irregularities or quality issues in daily international operations.
Members’ Operations Teleconferences take place every three weeks and provide the opportunity to inform all members of current issues as well as the development of on-going activities (IPC Bag Pool, Action Plans, Future of Mail by Air, Mail Registration Device, etc.).
Issuing Reports
Reports on exceptional events, such as weather problems and industrial action are issued to members as needed through the Exception Event Report and are kept on an event log, accessible to members on the Performance Centre web page.
Exceptional events are regular fluctuations in postal operations which must be coordinated. For example, at Christmas and the New Year mail volumes in some posts increase greatly, significantly affecting postal operations’ plans, or when airline summer and winter schedules are changed, affecting the routing and timing of mail transport.
Enabling Process Improvement
Another task of the Performance Centre is to help improve members’ operational processes by following up on members’ yearly Action Plans or their progress in implementing the Mail Registration Device.
The Centre sends top level managers of operations in the member posts monthly IPC Performance Alerts and, where applicable, IPC Pre-Certification Alerts with key performance indicators. These Performance Alerts are used to assess progress of implementation of members’ yearly Action Plans. Pre-certification Alerts are analyses of the postal operator’s in-house performance and the inbound and outbound performance over the previous six months. After the Certification, the Performance Centre sends out monthly Post-certification Alerts to highlight any identified shortcomings.
Also, if requested, the Centre provides special reports on quality issues, mail arrival profiles and RFID transponder reading analyses.