OWEGO, NY, 03-MAY-00 -- By installing mail tray automation equipment from Lockheed Martin, Fala Sorting Services in Farmingdale, N.Y., is sorting up to 3,000 additional pieces of mail per hour per machine without increasing its staff or expanding the footprint of its operation. A Lockheed Martin Integrated Mail Operations System (IMOS), which includes the company's new Automatic Tray Tracking System (ATTS) dispatch equipment, is helping Fala improve its quality significantly by reducing errors, while at the same time dispatching mail trays faster. In addition, the fully automated system has enhanced the work flow and ergonomics for mail handling operators.

Modular in design and incorporating an existing base of Lockheed Martin letter sorters, the highly flexible, fully automated IMOS manages tray movement and routing from the sweep side of Fala's letter sorting process to its shipping dock. The system collects, moves and singulates mail trays to either a re-pass staging area or a Lockheed Martin ATTS system, which automatically sleeves, bands, labels, scans and verifies tray destination tags prior to dispatch at the rate of 18 trays per minute.

In our quest to streamline our pre-sort and commingling processes, our executive team gave us four performance criteria to meet, said Steve Caldera, director of Technical Operations for Fala Sorting Service. They were cost, performance, support and technical approach. Lockheed Martin was our choice for this project because it offered best overall value.

With nearly a decade of field-proven success in delivering mail handling solutions, Lockheed Martin Postal Systems knows how to provide its commercial customers with innovative plug-and-play integration, emphasized Bob Huff, Lockheed Martin's Postal Systems vice president of Engineering and Product Development. Fala's forward-thinking approach to its business and its goal to provide a competitive, best-value price continuously to its customers closely couples our business goals. For this reason, Fala chose Lockheed Martin to be its material handling provider, Huff added.

The skill and understanding Lockheed Martin used to incorporate our existing equipment into the IMOS was an added bonus we really appreciated, Caldera said. Because the system is intelligent, we have a higher level of control. For example, an added benefit includes automated metrics, which improves system diagnostics for managing proactive maintenance and providing operators an easy to use tool for collecting and analyzing mail tray demographics.

The fully automated facility enables Fala to take on jobs with higher volume demands or additional work, Caldera emphasized. This new system is making a big difference for us. It gives us the confidence to meet our customers' needs, especially when the challenge calls for processing a larger volume of mail, he said.

Fala Sorting Services Inc., part of the Fala Group, is a full service pre-sort and commingling bureau. As the largest privately owned direct mail communication company on the East Coast, the Fala Group applies state-of-the-art technology in the areas of printing, data processing and personalization to volume mail, fulfillment and commingling.

A leader in design, production and systems integration of a broad product portfolio of recognition, sortation, material handling and information management systems equipment and technology, Lockheed Martin Postal Systems serves customers including domestic and international postal services and commercial customers. Postal Systems, with facilities in Owego, N.Y., Tulsa, Okla., and Orlando, Fla., is a unit of Lockheed Martin Corporation.