SIST-TS CEN/TS 14442:2005

Postal services - Automated processing of mail items - Facing identification marks

The purpose of this Technical Specification is to define a facing identification mark (FIM), with procedures for its use, which can be used by any postal operator. It is primarily addressed to those postal operators that have not yet implemented the use of FIMs for automated facing and has been designed to minimise conflict with FIM marks that are already in use. Nevertheless, operators with existing FIMs are encouraged to consider support for migration onto this Technical Specification as and when they upgrade or replace facing equipment.
Use of the standard FIM offers the possibility for automated preparation of letters which do not carry a stamp and which arrive, in a postal facility, without being faced. These items can them be included in the domestic and international mechanised streams of mail.
This Technical Specification allows facer-cancellers and culler-facer-cancellers (or other automated equipment supporting the mail preparation function), to detect bar code-type marks enabling those machines to face and cancel items carrying the FIM. Through the incorporation of a coded value, called the FIM-code, this Technical Specification also supports segregation of FIM-marked items into up to 18 separate streams. This capability can be used to facilitate revenue control by allowing items to be segregated according the type of revenue control procedure required. For example, Business Reply items could be separated and allow accounting and cancellation to take place before, rather than after, the items are transported to their delivery office. This would simplify controls designed to prevent the sending of business reply items to addresses in other countries. However, it should be recognized that FIMs have no in-built security and an item may carry an inappropriate FIM code, resulting in it being placed in the wrong processing stream. Hence, in particular, the FIM alone cannot be relied upon as providing evidence of payment.

Postalische Dienstleistungen - Automatische Bearbeitung von Postsendungen - Aufstellkennzeichnungen

Der Zweck dieser Technischen Spezifikation ist die Definition einer Aufstellkennzeichnung (FIM), einschließlich Verfahren für ihre Nutzung, die von jedem Postbetreiber angewandt werden können. Sie ist in erster Linie für Postbetreiber bestimmt, die noch keine FIMs für die automatische Kennung eingeführt haben. Sie ist so aufgebaut, dass Konflikte mit bereits bestehenden FIMs auf ein Minimum beschränkt werden. Betreiber, die bereits FIMs anwenden, werden ermutigt, die vorliegende Spezifikation zu unterstützen, wenn sie ihre gegenwärtigen Aufstelleinrichtungen aufrüsten oder erneuern.
Die Anwendung der standardmäßigen FIM-Kennung ermöglicht die automatische Vorbereitung von Briefen ohne Freimachungsvermerk und die ohne Aufstellung in einer postalischen Einrichtung eingehen. Diese Sendungen können dann in den inländischen oder internationalen automatischen Sendungsstrom aufgenommen werden.
Die vorliegende Technische Spezifikation ermöglicht den Aufstell-Stempelvorrichtungen und den Formattrenn-/Aufstelleinrichtungen (bzw. sonstigen automatischen Einrichtungen, die die Vorbereitung von Postsendungen unterstützen), Balkencode-Typenkennungen zu erkennen, durch die diese Einrichtungen in die Lage versetzt werden, Sendungen mit entsprechender FIM-Kennung aufzustellen und zu stempeln. Durch die Aufnahme eines kodierten Wertes, der als FIM-Code bezeichnet wird, unterstützt diese Technische Spezifikation die Trennung von Sendungen mit FIM-Vermerk in bis zu 18 einzelne Ströme. Diese Fähigkeit kann dazu genutzt werden, die Einnahmekontrolle zu erleichtern, da sie es möglich macht, Sendungen nach Typ des erforderlichen Einnahme-kontrollverfahrens zu trennen. Werbeantwortsendungen können beispielsweise ausgesondert werden, sodass die Abrechnung und Stempelung vor der Weiterbeförderung zum Bestimmungsamt stattfindet und nicht erst danach. Das erleichtert die Kontrollen, die verhindern sollen, dass Werbeantwortsendungen an Anschriften in anderen Ländern geschickt werden. Es sollte

Services postaux - Traitement automatique des envois postaux - Marques d'identification de redressement

La présente Spécification technique a pour objet de définir une marque d'identification de redressement (FIM), accompagnée des procédures relatives a son utilisation, pouvant etre employée par tout opérateur postal. Cette marque, qui s'adresse principalement aux opérateurs postaux n'ayant pas encore mis en place le systeme de marques FIM pour le redressement automatique, a été conçue pour réduire au minimum tout conflit avec les marques FIM déja utilisées. Les opérateurs disposant de marques FIM sont néanmoins invités a envisager d'adopter la présente Spécification technique lors de l'amélioration ou du remplacement de leur matériel de redressement.
L'utilisation de la marque FIM standard offre la possibilité d'une préparation automatique des lettres non timbrées et qui arrivent dans un service postal sans avoir été redressées. Ces objets postaux peuvent alors etre intégrés aux flux de courrier national et international mécanisés.
La présente Spécification technique permet aux redresseuses oblitératrices et aux ségrégatrices, redresseuses oblitératrices (ou autres équipements automatiques d'assistance de la fonction de préparation du courrier) de détecter les marques de type codes a barres qui facilitent la tâche de ces machines avec les objets postaux portant la marque FIM. En intégrant une valeur codée, appelée code FIM, la présente Spécification technique facilite également la ségrégation des objets postaux portant la marque FIM en 18 flux distincts. Cette capacité peut etre utilisée pour permettre un contrôle plus aisé des recettes en ségréguant les objets postaux en fonction du type de procédure de contrôle des recettes requis. Les objets postaux commerciaux-réponse, par exemple, peuvent etre séparés et permettre de procéder a leur comptabilisation et a leur oblitération avant, plutôt qu'apres, qu'ils ne soient acheminés vers leur bureau de distribution. Ceci simplifierait les contrôles visant a prévenir l'envoi d'objets postaux commerciaux-réponse a des adre

Poštne storitve – Avtomatsko usmerjanje poštnih pošiljk - Identifikacijske označbe na prednji strani

General Information

• Status: Published
• Publication Date: 31-Dec-2004
• ICS: 03.240 - Postal services
• Technical Committee: SS SPL - Technical Board for the general field
• Current Stage: 6060 - National Implementation/Publication (Adopted Project)
• Start Date: 01-Jan-2005
• Due Date: 01-Jan-2005
• Completion Date: 01-Jan-2005
• Directive: 2002/39/EC - Directive 2002/39/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 10 June 2002 amending Directive 97/67/EC with regard to the further opening to competition of Community postal services
• Mandate: M/240 - Mandate to CEN for standardisation in the field of postal services and equipment
• Ref Project: CEN/TS 14442:2003 - Postal services - Automated processing of mail items - Facing identification marks

Standards Content (Sample)

SLOVENSKI STANDARD
SIST-TS CEN/TS 14442:2005
01-januar-2005
3RãWQHVWRULWYH±$YWRPDWVNRXVPHUMDQMHSRãWQLKSRãLOMN,GHQWLILNDFLMVNHR]QDþEH
QDSUHGQMLVWUDQL
Postal services - Automated processing of mail items - Facing identification marks
Postalische Dienstleistungen - Automatische Bearbeitung von Postsendungen -
Aufstellkennzeichnungen
Services postaux - Traitement automatique des envois postaux - Marques d'identification
de redressement
Ta slovenski standard je istoveten z: CEN/TS 14442:2003
ICS:
03.240 Poštne storitve Postal services
SIST-TS CEN/TS 14442:2005 en
2003-01.Slovenski inštitut za standardizacijo. Razmnoževanje celote ali delov tega standarda ni dovoljeno.

---------------------- Page: 1 ----------------------

SIST-TS CEN/TS 14442:2005

---------------------- Page: 2 ----------------------

SIST-TS CEN/TS 14442:2005
TECHNICAL SPECIFICATION
CEN/TS 14442
SPÉCIFICATION TECHNIQUE
TECHNISCHE SPEZIFIKATION
March 2003
ICS 03.240
English version
Postal services – Automated processing of mail items – Facing
identification marks
This Technical Specification (CEN/TS) was approved by CEN on 16 October 2002 for provisional application.
The period of validity of this CEN/TS is limited initially to three years. After two years the members of CEN will be requested to submit their
comments, particularly on the question whether the CEN/TS can be converted into a European Standard.
CEN members are required to announce the existence of this CEN/TS in the same way as for an EN and to make the CEN/TS available. It
is permissible to keep conflicting national standards in force (in parallel to the CEN/TS) until the final decision about the possible
conversion of the CEN/TS into an EN is reached.
CEN members are the national standards bodies of Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece,
Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and United
Kingdom.
EUROPEAN COMMITTEE FOR STANDARDIZATION
COMITÉ EUROPÉEN DE NORMALISATION
EUROPÄISCHES KOMITEE FÜR NORMUNG
Management Centre: rue de Stassart, 36  B-1050 Brussels
© 2003 CEN All rights of exploitation in any form and by any means reserved Ref. No. CEN/TS 14442:2003 E
worldwide for CEN national Members.

---------------------- Page: 3 ----------------------

SIST-TS CEN/TS 14442:2005
CEN/TS 14442:2003 (E)
Contents
Foreword. 3
1 Scope . 6
2 Normative references . 7
3 Terms and definitions . 7
4 Symbols and abbreviations. 8
5 FIM functions. 8
6 Definition of the FIM and FIM-code. 9
6.1 Introduction. 9
6.2 Encoding of the FIM-code as a five bar code. 9
6.3 OCR Encoding of the Licensing Post and FIM-code. 10
6.4 Quiet zones . 10
7 Printing of the FIM . 11
7.1 Dimensions and tolerances of the bars. 11
7.2 Permitted skew of the bars. 12
7.3 Permitted misalignment of the bars. 12
7.4 OCR encoding. 13
7.5 Print quality and contrast. 14
7.5.1 Measurement conditions. 14
7.5.2 Reflectance specifications . 15
8 Location of FIM . 15
9 Reading of the FIM-code. 17
10 Interpretation of the FIM-code . 17
Bibliography . 18
2

---------------------- Page: 4 ----------------------

SIST-TS CEN/TS 14442:2005
CEN/TS 14442:2003 (E)
Foreword
This document (CEN/TS 14442:2003) has been prepared by Technical Committee CEN /TC 331 "Postal services",
the secretariat of which is held by NEN.
This document has been prepared under a mandate given to CEN by the European Commission and the European
Free Trade Association, and supports essential requirements of EU Directive(s).
According to the CEN/CENELEC Internal Regulations, the national standards organizations of the following
countries are bound to anounce this European Standard: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland,
France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal,
Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
This Technical Specification includes a Bibliography.
3

---------------------- Page: 5 ----------------------

SIST-TS CEN/TS 14442:2005
CEN/TS 14442:2003 (E)
Introduction
The automated processing of letter mail generally requires that items are oriented in a common way, with the
delivery address and eventual postage evidence facing the automated reading device and with the bottom edges
1)
aligned . Mail that is oriented in this way is referred to as being faced.
The majority of business-generated mail is already faced at the time of acceptance into the postal system. This is
not the case for mail that is deposited in street or post office collection boxes. Prior to automated sorting, such mail
requires facing, either manually or by means of automated facing machines. The facing function is often integrated
2)
with other mail preparation functions, such as culling and cancelling .
For facing purposes, some means of detecting both the orientation and the front of the item are required. This is
achieved in many different ways, including:
 use of postage stamp features such as serration pattern, image and/or encoding with phosphorescent or
fluorescent bars or dots;
 postage meter franking marks printed using fluorescent ink;
 patterns of horizontal or vertical bars, called facing identification marks or FIM’s.
A FIM is thus a mark placed on a mail item to assist in facing the item. It is generally applied to the upper right
1)
corner of the front of the mail item. Different FIM patterns may also be used for mail stream separation, for
example to distinguish between business reply and normal mail; to distinguish between different mail priorities or
even to segregate out particular high-volume mail flows, such as tax returns; bank transfers or charity donations.
FIM’s are widely used, though they are not used in every EU country and, in some countries, they are currently
used only for manual facing. The FIM’s currently in use vary from country to country. Thus for example, Denmark,
the Netherlands and the United Kingdom use (different) patterns of vertical bars whilst Austria and Portugal use
horizontal bar patterns.
As long as items are mailed only in the country of production, the existence of different FIM’s in different countries
does not pose any problem. Increasingly, however, it is expected that items, and especially pre-addressed
envelopes and business reply mail, will be mailed in other countries.
As illustrated by the following example, this can lead to difficulties in facing. Suppose a company in Austria sends a
letter to its customer in the United Kingdom. This letter contains a prepaid envelope for the reply, which will need to
be faced and cancelled in the U.K. and then sent to Austria. However the pre-paid envelope will carry an Austrian-
post facing identification mark. This will not be recognised by Royal Mail, even though the latter uses FIM’s for
automated facing. The item will be rejected for manual processing.
3)
As a result of such issues, when a contract to process international business reply (IBRS) mail has been signed
between the postal operators of two countries, the whole process – preparation of the mail, sorting, request for
payment to the licensee and sharing of this payment between the operators – needs to be done manually. To
mechanise this process an international FIM mark would be needed. This would allow IBRS mail to be segregated,
sorted by destination country, automatically counted and accounted between the two postal operators involved.

1)
For letter mail items, UPU standard S19 defines the Front, or Face ; the Reverse and the Bottom edge. It also defines a number of
encoding areas, which will include the area for printing FIMs.
2)
Culling involves the separation, from the mail stream, of items which are too large, too thick, too flimsy or too rigid to pass through
subsequent sortation equipment ; cancellation is the process of applying postmarks to prevent fraudulent re-use of evidence of payment and to
record the date and location of initial processing.
3)
The UPU has defined an International Business Reply Service (IBRS), but this makes no mention of the use of FIM’s ; is clearly
oriented towards manual processing and is limited to a single class of service.
4

---------------------- Page: 6 ----------------------

SIST-TS CEN/TS 14442:2005
CEN/TS 14442:2003 (E)
The use of similar FIM’s could, however, lead to misrouting in cases in which the facing mark is also used for
mail-stream segregation. For example, PTT Post in the Netherlands uses FIM’s on pre-addressed envelopes to
segregate mail containing Postbank Giro transfers from other mail. The items so segregated are delivered directly
to the Postbank Giro centre without further processing. This does not pose a problem as long as the items are not
posted in a country with a similar FIM mark specification. But if, say, France, were to introduce a similar FIM and to
use it to segregate tax returns, the result would be that Dutch Postbank Giro transfers posted in France would be
routed to the French tax office, whilst French tax returns posted in the Netherlands would be routed to the Dutch
Postbank!
There is therefore a need for a well-defined standard FIM mark, which could be used by all posts, together with
appropriate rules and procedures for its use for mail-stream segregation purposes. This would ensure that (new)
FIM’s, designed in accordance with the standard, would be widely recognised and not result in misrouting of
FIM-marked mail.
This Technical Specification is designed to meet the above need. It uses horizontal bars in order to minimise the
4)
risk of confusion with existing FIM marks, most of which use a vertical bar pattern . This ensures that those posts
that have already implemented FIMs can continue to use their existing systems for domestic purposes.

4)
The FIMs used in Austria and Portugal also use a horizontal bar pattern, but the characteristics of these are such that there should be
little risk of their being confused with FIMs printed in accordance with this Technical Specification.
5

---------------------- Page: 7 ----------------------

SIST-TS CEN/TS 14442:2005
CEN/TS 14442:2003 (E)
1 Scope
The purpose of this Technical Specification is to define a facing identification mark (FIM), with procedures for its
use, which can be used by any postal operator. It is primarily addressed to those postal operators that have not yet
implemented the use of FIMs for automated facing and has been designed to minimise conflict with FIM marks that
are already in use. Nevertheless, operators with existing FIMs are encouraged to consider support for migration to
this Technical Specification as and when they upgrade or replace facing equipment.
Use of the standard FIM offers the possibility for automated preparation of letters which do not carry a stamp and
which arrive, in a postal facility, without being faced. These items can them be included in the domestic and
international mechanised streams of mail.
This Technical Specification allows facer-cancellers and culler-facer-cancellers (or other automated equipment
supporting the mail preparation function), to detect bar code-type marks enabling those machines to face and
cancel items carrying the FIM. Through the incorporation of a coded value, called the FIM-code, this Technical
Specification also supports segregation of FIM-marked items into up to 18 separate streams. This capability can be
used to facilitate revenue control by allowing items to be segregated according the type of revenue control
procedure required. For example, Business Reply items could be separated and allow accounting and cancellation
to take place before, rather than after, the items are transported to their delivery office. This would simplify controls
designed to prevent the sending of business reply items to addresses in other countries. However, it should be
recognized that FIMs have no in-built security and an item may carry an inappropriate FIM code, resulting in it
being placed in the wrong processing stream. Hence, in particular, the FIM alone cannot be relied upon as
providing evidence of payment.
The scope of this Technical Specification includes, but is not limited to:
 postal services mail;
 government mail;
5)
 franked mail ;
 postcards and envelopes with pre-printed evidence of postage paid;
 mail carrying automated teller machine (ATM) printed stamps;
 business reply mail.
This Technical Specification has been designed to be compatible with and may thus also be applied to international
business reply mail which is compliant with the UPU International Business Reply Service (IBRS).
This Technical Specification may also be advantageously applied to items carrying digital postage marks (DPM’s)
in accordance with UPU standards S28 and S25. Though the two symbologies supported by UPU standard S28
(Data Matrix and PDF417) have characteristics which are easily recognised by image processing equipment and
can be used, as facing marks, by mail preparation equipment with an image processing capability, there may
nevertheless be advantages in the use of a separate FIM. This would allow facing of the mail using inexpensive
equipment prior to its being processed by equipment with full image processing capability. The FIM could even be
used to segregate mail carrying a DPM, avoiding the need to pass other mail through DPM-reading equipment.
It could occur that the FIM is present on items that are already faced. In this case, the FIM is largely redundant, but
could still be used, if appropriate, for mail stream segregation purposes. Equally, customers may apply stamps to
items that carry a FIM, for example because (additional) postage has to be paid. In case an item carries both a FIM
and a stamp, the stamp should normally be given priority.

5)
i.e. mail carrying postage meter franking marks.
6

--------------
...