Traditional vs FloorPulse ▶ Presenter view ↗
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Traditional workflow
FloorPulse workflow
1The run lands
Presort run completes
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The mail.dat output lands in a folder and waits. Production doesn't start until someone notices it and begins the paperwork run.
Presort run completes
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The same starting point — the presort run finishes and writes its mail.dat. From here, the two floors diverge.
Mail.dat drops in hotfolder
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Auto-detected, validated
Hot folder import
  • › Detected, validated, version-identified, and imported automatically — no manual entry, no conversion.
  • › A duplicate JobID with no production activity is replaced; once production starts, it's rejected to protect the floor.
  • › Every attempt logged: imported · replaced · rejected · superseded · failed.
Supervisor releases it
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The gatekeeper — makes the job visible to the floor
Staged import & lifecycle
  • › Imported data stays staged and hidden until the supervisor releases it — the one gate deciding what the floor sees.
  • › Live → Done → Archived lifecycle; mailing stations only ever see Live jobs.
2Getting to the floor
Print tray tags
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Desktop app, laser printer
Open the desktop tag app, send the entire run to a laser printer, then collate the printout by tray order before anything can move.
Print pallet placards
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Collate by pallet order
Same again for pallet placards — print the full set on the laser and sort it into pallet order by hand.
Walk paper to floor
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Distribute to stations
Carry the stacks onto the floor and hand the right bundle to each station. Anything misdelivered surfaces later as a production error.
Component Equipment Station
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Track components as they're built — no walking the floor
Component Equipment Station

Scan a piece IMb as the mail's components are built — VDP printing, folding, cutting, inserting — and FloorPulse tracks it by stack, tray, and package unit. The traditional floor records the same work by hand, if at all. The time this saves isn't even counted in the hours below — it's on top.

Traditional — manual ledger
  • Paper ticket or clipboard at the press, folder, cutter
  • Stack/tray/bundle counts written by hand — when someone remembers
  • Presort sequence on paper, re-keyed later if at all
  • No digital footprint — nothing to query or roll up
  • A wrong job or segment can run for hours before anyone catches it
FloorPulse — Component Equipment Station
  • Scan a piece IMb at any component machine — VDP, folder, cutter, inserter
  • Tracks stacks, trays, and package units as each stack is built
  • Prints stack tags + a Load Flag Summary placard per pallet
  • Digital ledger: equipment, timestamp, presort sequence, resolved tray & pallet
  • Color-coded alerts catch a wrong job or segment on the first scan
  • Live in the Component Monitor — pieces, trays, pallets, run speed, time left — from any screen
3Production
Production runs
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Sort through tag stacks

Worse, jobs split without warning. To hit a deadline a run gets divided across other mailing stations mid-job — and now the preprinted tag and placard stacks have to be split too, getting exactly the right paperwork to the right station. Guess the division wrong and a station runs short, grabs a neighbor's tags, or stalls waiting for paper.

At the station, operators dig through the stack to find the tag that matches each tray. A wrong tag in a wrong tray is easy to make — and usually caught long after the fact.

With FloorPulse, splitting a job across stations is a natural move: add a station, it scans, and it prints exactly the tags it handles — no stack to divide.
Operator scans piece IMb
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At the Mailing Work Station — wedge or camera
Barcode scan
  • › Keyboard-wedge or camera scan; FloorPulse resolves the piece to its tray via the CQT linkage.
  • › HID focus capture intercepts scanner input even when a button has focus; a "resume scanning" banner appears if the window loses focus.
Tray tag prints on demand
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Zebra at the workstation
Tag printing & hardware
  • › The USPS L-3216A tray tag prints at the workstation the instant the piece is scanned — no preprinted stacks.
  • › Drives Zebra ZPL and Microcom LDS thermal printers directly over the network — no print-server middleware.
  • › Fully configurable tag (live preview, three mailer zones) matched to each site's mail.dat fields.
Pallet placard auto-prints
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Last child tray triggers it
Automatic pallet completion
  • › When the last child tray is scanned, the USPS DMM 204 placard generates automatically — no operator step.
  • › Force-complete a partial pallet and FloorPulse builds a 2-page PDF: placard + a missed-tray manifest.
4The rerun
Rerun required
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A thickness correction, a list revision, an insert change — and the whole job has to run again.
Recall old paperwork
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↻ REPEAT PER RERUNFind and destroy old tags
Walk the floor to find every old tag and placard, destroy them, then reprint and redistribute the entire set — once for every rerun.
Rerun required
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A rerun still happens — corrections are part of the work. The difference is what it costs you.
New mail.dat replaces old
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↻ RESUME SCANNINGCurrent data, instantly
Instant replacement
  • › The new mail.dat replaces the old one instantly; the floor is on current data with no recall step.
  • › Nothing to find and destroy — it was never printed. Operators simply resume scanning.
5The tally
~15 min per cycle
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234–560 hrs / yr
A conservative 15 minutes per paperwork cycle adds up to 234–560 hours a year — time that never moves a single piece of mail.
Error risks
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  • ✕ Wrong tag on the wrong tray
  • ✕ Old tags used after a data reprocess
  • ✕ Double-pulled placards
  • ✕ Pre-tagging surprises — during a run, at the dock, or on the BCG Mailer Scorecard
0 min paperwork
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234–560 hrs / yr back
Zero minutes on paperwork. The 234–560 hours come straight back to the floor — for more jobs, less overtime, and the work that grows the business.
Built-in protections
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The scan is the safeguard
Visibility & chain of custody
  • ✓ See both stations — Component Equipment and Mailing Work — live from any screen, no walking the floor.
  • ✓ No tag until the tray is scanned — and no old tags to recall.
  • ✓ Duplicate scan detection across every station; a mismatch is flagged on contact.
  • ✓ Full chain of custody — piece IMb → tray tag → pallet placard — provable down to the individual piece.
Traditional
234–560 hrs
a year on paperwork that doesn't move a single piece of mail
FloorPulse
0 hrs
it was never printed — those hours come back to the floor