Siemens Builds Innovative and World-Class Mail Sorting System on JBoss Enterprise Application Platform

Infrastructure Logistics (IL), based in Konstanz, Germany is the global market leader in postal automation solutions catering to the needs of mail and parcel logistics providers around the world. IL builds high-performance sorting machines and image management systems capable of handling several hundreds of thousands of mail pieces per hour. These postal automation systems include specialised scanners that provide high-resolution images for automatic address recognition for subsequent sorting of the physical mail pieces. IL combines hardware and software solutions based on customer requirements, always looking for the most robust, scalable, and reliable combination of technologies available. Wherever possible, IL uses proven enterprise-class software as a base. ILand#x2019;s customers are major state-owned and privately owned postal and parcel logistics organizations worldwide that constantly strive to make the journey of a mail piece from sender to recipient faster, more reliable and secure, and cost-efficient.

In 2004, IL started the development of a new generation of postal automation solutions, combining the latest technologies for high-speed image scanning, address recognition, and the end-to-end processing of networked delivery logistics. Its custom software platform, Open Reading Coding Architecture (ORCA), is located at the heart of this new generation of postal automation solutions.

“Incoming mail at a postal distribution centre is first run through high-speed scanners that generate grey scale images of each and every mail piece,” says Peter Schindler, product manager for ORCA. “ORCA runs these images by the address reading module, using the latest in character recognition technologies. Once we have the recipient address in its raw form, it is matched with the official address database of the postal organization, which then returns the appropriate sorting code for the particular letter. The sorting machine then either prints a destination barcode or an ID barcode on the envelope, depending on the customer’s system.”

In theory, this process looks fairly straight forward. In practice, however, it’s an extremely complex and demanding physical and digital process involving sorting machines that run at operating speeds of up to four meters per second and handle up to 60,000 letters per hour. Moreover, IL’s customers look for high system availability and often combine 10 to 20 sorting machines in one location and connect several sorting centre locations, creating even more complex logistics networks for fast and reliable mail delivery. With these factors in mind, IL defined the software requirements for ORCA in 2004.

“Strategically, we concentrate on the application level; operating systems, databases and middleware come from established software vendors. We adapt them to meet our own and our customers’ requirements”, says Schindler. “Very early in the planning process, it was obvious that ORCA’s middleware architecture would play a crucial role in achieving the performance and high availability levels we wanted to reach.”

As ORCA was designed as the core product platform for the next decade and beyond, IL also wanted the middleware layer to support high-availability features, clustering, and scalability. Furthermore the system had to provide room for customization according to various postal organizations’ specifications.

IL evaluated middleware and development frameworks from Red Hat and other suppliers. All candidates were examined for technical features such as clustering and scalability, as well as overall performance and license costs. “We went for Java EE as the middleware development framework and Red Hat’s JBoss Enterprise Application Platform because they were technical contenders with the additional benefit of cost savings through Red Hat’s subscription model.”

JBoss Enterprise Application Platform offered IL an innovative and scalable platform for Java applications, enabling IL to integrate its JBoss Application Server to create an enterprise solution for Java applications. Today, more than 15 postal operators have deployed ORCA–based postal automation systems.

“Our customers often give their end consumers a next-day delivery guarantee. If you consider the short period of time available for capturing, recognizing, sorting, and forwarding millions of letters across the country, usually during the night, you can imagine the processing power that ORCA provides,” says Schindler. “The clustering abilities of JBoss Enterprise Application Platform provide up to 99.8 percent availability for our customers. Given the volume of mail handled every day throughout Central European countries for example, that’s an excellent result.”

Besides the fully automated scanning and address recognition, ORCA also helps handle letters with addresses that can’t be completely read. When the system is unable to determine the complete and correct address, the mail piece image is directed to so-called “video coding”. That means that an enlarged address field is displayed to a trained employee who then deciphers the address and manually enters the required data. On average, about 10–20 percent of the mail pieces go into video coding. That adds another level of complexity to the sorting process.

IL adapts its sorting systems to meet customer requirements. The ORCA solution runs on x86–based computers and Microsoft Windows and uses an (optionally clustered) Oracle database filled with the customer-specific address catalogue and sorting codes.

Thanks to JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, IL has been able to create a flexible, customizable, and scalable platform for its ORCA solution. JBoss Enterprise Application Platform clustering capabilities provide high availability and fully automatic failover capacities that enable postal organizations around the globe to handle an often seasonally fluctuating volume of mail and fulfil their service quality goals.

“Clustering is a key capability that differentiates ORCA from our previous processing solution. Besides providing up to 99.8 percent availability, it also helps our customers scale their businesses. They can now easily start with smaller systems and then expand to nationwide logistics networks capable of synchronizing deliveries of outgoing and incoming mail,” says Schindler.

IL provides training and support to its customers and works to limit time-consuming troubleshooting. High reliability of the underlying system layers, and especially the middleware architecture, is instrumental in delivering on
that level of service.

“We help our customers to concentrate on smooth operations of their sorting systems. They do not have to care about middleware or databases. The good thing about JBoss Enterprise Application Platform is that we don’t have much trouble with it,” says Schindler. “Red Hat Support helped us to build ORCA based on Java EE and JBoss Enterprise Application Platform. Today the application platform is solid, and we only rarely tap the expert knowledge of Red Hat. That’s mostly to solve very specific customization issues.”

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