The U.S. Postal Service is best known for delivering the mail. But did you know it’s also the number one seller of the most widely used type of alternative financial service in the United States? We’re talking about money orders, which function like prepaid checks. The Postal Service sold a whopping 97 million of them with a face value of $21 billion in fiscal year 2014.
Could the U.S. Postal Service help the nearly 70 million Americans who are cut off in some way from the mainstream financial system? We’re talking about people who, because they lack ready or full access to normal banking services, paid $89 billion in fees and interest to alternative financial service outlets such as payday lenders and check cashers in 2012 alone. They are the financially underserved – also known as the underbanked or unbanked – and many of them are one unexpected expense away from bankruptcy or homelessness.
Forget True Detective. A noir-ish saga is unfolding in the advertising world, complete with favoritism, kickbacks, and shady deals. Who wants the movie rights?
A new report from the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), which represents many of the largest advertisers, found...
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Change begets change, said Charles Dickens amid the upheavals of the Industrial Revolution. The same could be said of the Logistics Revolution, which is still roiling the landscape with no signs of slowing down.
Since the 2013 release of our paper...
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The world is getting smaller, and not just because viruses and bacteria from foreign countries are showing up here. We can buy something made halfway around the world and have it on our doorstep in a few days. We can also instantaneously send across national boundaries not only information, but...
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Kaizen, the Japanese word for "improvement," is also a strategy to produce incremental improvements in processes. Kaizen was first implemented in several Japanese businesses after World War II, influenced in part by American business and quality management teachers who visited the country.
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Process scheduling is widely used in private industry to meet production deadlines, increase efficiency, and reduce machine downtime. The Postal Service uses a process scheduling program called the Run Plan Generator (RPG) to schedule machines that sort the mail by ZIP Code.
The RPG...
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Network Distribution Centers (NDCs) are part of Postal Service’s transportation network, consisting of 21 facilities dedicated to handling and moving mail. Highway Contract Routes (HCR) contracts are competitive fixed-price agreements awarded to suppliers to transport mail between post offices,...
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