IMB - End of the Postnet Barcode for USPS
Monday, April 21, 2008
Posted in: Barcodes
IMB- The Intelligent Mail Barcode: The USPS Goes High Tech
You might be surprised to find out where the latest and most highly-efficient barcode is being adopted: the United States Postal Service. Their “magic bullet” is the Intelligent Mail Barcode or IMB and it will go into widespread use in May 2009.
IMB is already in use (since September 2006) for letter mail. Its adoption will mark the end of the Postnet barcode, although it is visually obvious that IMB evolved from Postnet lineage. Like any successful evolution, IMB has adapted to encode much more information. Whereas Postnet supported critical automatic sortation date, IMB does that and much more, in a barcode that is only 3 bars longer. IMB can accommodate in one barcode what formerly required three lines of data and can include user-defined data.
IMB enhances the ability of the postal service to sort and track letters and flats, and track individual mail pieces. with greater visibility to customers.
The benefits to mailers include the ability to incorporate several functions into the IMB that used to require a second or third data set on the address label, such as address correction service (ACS) data, Confirm or compliance with Move Update data and of course the ability to comply and qualify for automation discount postal rates.
Benefits to mailers and their customers are the greater visibility of mailings to destination through enhanced tracking tools, and user-defined identification of up to a billion pieces within a mailing. And, for what its worth, IMB looks better and un-clutters the mailing label.
Is there a downside to IMB? Besides the expense and disruption of implementation, its pretty much a total plus for everybody. But the IMB must work for the benefits to be meaningful, and herein lies perhaps a yet-undiscovered disadvantage of IMB in comparison to Postnet.
A well-seasoned, experienced mail shop handler can decipher Postnet into a ZIP code by eye. Nobody known to me can do that with IMB without a scanner.
But there’s good news here too—Honeywell has a great little hand-held scanner 4600G that can not only decode the IMB, it can also perform basic quality checks on it as well.
You heard it here first.
