PDVerse wrote: » 1. Get items from many locations and bring them to one or a few central locations. 2. Group items and send to dispersed delivery centres 3. Group items for delivery personnel to deliver from these centres 4. Deliver The Routing Key is designed to optimise step 2 process for An Post for items that require manual sortation.
PDVerse wrote: » Antoin, I could answer your post, providing as much information as I can, to help you better understand how mail sorting works and why the Routing Code is so important.
However there really isn't any point in me doing so if you're going to dismiss it as "post-hoc technical justification".
The main reason I post here is to counter misconceptions that I know are untrue, and to provide the rationale for decisions that were made. That is all, I'm not trying to change anyone's mind. This thread will not materially affect Eircode adoption, irrespective of whether it is pro or anti Eircode.
If you are willing to engage on the basis that we may agree to disagree on the weighting of pros and cons of design decisions then please ask away, but this time without accusations of lying.
PDVerse wrote: » There are manual processes that involve handling of items, placing them in a slot/bag. Different sorting centres have different requirements. The following is a hypothetical to illustrate the issue: In sorting centre 1 they sort all Eircodes that don't start with the letters H or V into slots marked by just the first letter of the Eircode (One slot for A, one for C, etc.). For H and V they sort them into individual slots marked with the Eircode Routing Key. In other sorting centres the letters they want to sub-sort are different. What you are asking for is that they would sort many Routing Keys into the same slot. Let's say H23 has its own slot, but H53, H54 and H62 all go into the same slot, and H65 again has its own slot. That is a more complex and thus slower manual process.
antoinolachtnai wrote: » This made political sense, but it does not make any technical or business sense, because An Post is not and will not be particularly significant in terms of volume of deliveries to homes - there are other organisations that deliver services to homes just as frequently - and there are many other organization that have much higher value deliveries. The reality is that An Post is in terminal decline, and that the daily flat postal service on which the code is oriented will not survive the decade.
plodder wrote: » How so? If the manual process means a human reading the RK and typing it in on a machine, then it wouldn't be more complicated If the manual process is is literally 100% manual (which seems unlikely) then they just have a larger list of RKs to look at, but they are likely to be sorted alphabetically and not hard to see. How does that increase complexity in any significant way? You'll have to explain that one ....
PDVerse wrote: » It would increase the complexity and thus reduce the efficiency of the manual sortation process.
It would also make it far more likely that a Routing Key would need to change for an existing Eircode.
Until I see evidence to the contrary my view remains that Eircode Routing Keys have zero effect on implementation or public adoption.
PDVerse wrote: » It would increase the complexity and thus reduce the efficiency of the manual sortation process. It would also make it far more likely that a Routing Key would need to change for an existing Eircode. Until I see evidence to the contrary my view remains that Eircode Routing Keys have zero effect on implementation or public adoption.
Sam Russell wrote: » What difference for An Post would renumbering P51 (the bit east of the rest of P51) as P52? Surely it would make no difference as the software would be programmed so the [P52 = P51]. However, it would be clear to anyone that P52 is to the east of P51, which could be quite useful. Continue that argument for the huge area of H91 and divide into three new routing keys : Galway City; North of Galway City; and South of Galway City. Continue that for all the huge ones and it begins to look more promising - maybe when there are about 500 routing keys that are arranged in logical areas like Urban vs rural, align as much as can be with county boundaries, etc. You never know, people may even start using them.
PDVerse wrote: » The short version is that Routing Keys are not geographic areas, so the fact that it appears as two discrete "areas" has zero impact on sortation. The following is a gross simplification of the delivery process for An Post or any large courier/distribution company. 1. Get items from many locations and bring them to one or a few central locations. 2. Group items and send to dispersed delivery centres 3. Group items for delivery personnel to deliver from these centres 4. Deliver If you can't find the address, this causes a delivery delay at step 4. What impacts most delays however is step 2. The stickers that An Post put on mail to complain about the wrong postal address being used is because it caused step 2 to go wrong, which causes delay. Most commentary along the lines of "I have a unique address which no one has any difficulty finding so I don't need to use Eircode" ignores the delay caused by step 2. An Eircode dramatically improves the optimisation of step 2. The Routing Key is designed to optimise step 2 process for An Post for items that require manual sortation.
Curly Judge wrote: » I'd like to thank you for bringing in a system that An Post didn't ask for, doesn't use and has no intention of using in the future. Could you inform us of how An Post 's deliveries can be effected by a system it doesn't even use?
PDVerse wrote: » The short version is that Routing Keys are not geographic areas, so the fact that it appears as two discrete "areas" has zero impact on sortation. The following is a gross simplification of the delivery process for An Post or any large courier/distribution company. 1. Get items from many locations and bring them to one or a few central locations. 2. Group items and send to dispersed delivery centres 3. Group items for delivery personnel to deliver from these centres 4. Deliver If you can't find the address, this causes a delivery delay at step 4. What impacts most delays however is step 2. The stickers that An Post put on mail to complain about the wrong postal address being used is because it caused step 2 to go wrong, which causes delay.Most commentary along the lines of "I have a unique address which no one has any difficulty finding so I don't need to use Eircode" ignores the delay caused by step 2. An Eircode dramatically improves the optimisation of step 2. The Routing Key is designed to optimise step 2 process for An Post for items that require manual sortation.
Carawaystick wrote: » Can you explain how sorting is done for P51?
PDVerse wrote: » Antoin, I could answer your post, providing as much information as I can, to help you better understand how mail sorting works and why the Routing Code is so important. However there really isn't any point in me doing so if you're going to dismiss it as "post-hoc technical justification". The main reason I post here is to counter misconceptions that I know are untrue, and to provide the rationale for decisions that were made. That is all, I'm not trying to change anyone's mind. This thread will not materially affect Eircode adoption, irrespective of whether it is pro or anti Eircode. If you are willing to engage on the basis that we may agree to disagree on the weighting of pros and cons of design decisions then please ask away, but this time without accusations of lying.
PDVerse wrote: » Two different people didn't produce maps that look remarkably similar. I specified both. Gamma and Autoaddress share an Eircode.
plodder wrote: » Whatever. We'll agree to disagree then. I'll call them geographic areas, and you can call them "approximate areas that encompass the contents of routing keys" or whatever you like and we'll just regard it as a a strange co-incidence that two different people produced maps that look remarkably similar from areas with arbitrary boundaries that don't exist :rolleyes:
oscarBravo wrote: » If you think "approximate" and "arbitrary" are mutually exclusive, you're just redefining words to suit your purpose. No. I'm saying that you can arbitrarily define a boundary somewhere between two things, but that that doesn't logically imply that the boundary exists in its own right. It's nothing whatsoever like saying that. Routing keys aren't geographic areas. You can create approximate areas that encompass the contents of routing keys, true. I could create an approximate circle encompassing the place where you're standing, but that doesn't mean you're a circle.
plodder wrote: » "arbitrary geographic areas that closely approximate the extent of routing keys" is a contradiction. They can't be both arbitrary and closely approximate the extent of routing keys.
So, even though we can know that the boundary between two routing key areas lies between two houses, but we can't say exactly what the path is, you are saying that means the boundary doesn't exist...
It's a bit like saying, a carefully drawn circle using a compass, is not a circle, because something hand drawn doesn't (and can't) follow the 100% exact path of a circle.
plodder wrote: » Two points about that. First, as soon as you assigned a colour to each of those points (however it was done), the areas were defined. Second, it really doesn't matter exactly where you draw lines so long as each colour is always on one side of a line.
PDVerse wrote: » Just by way of clarifying the issue, here's a current screenshot (errors and all) with background mapping turned off. Where you decide to draw lines is arbitrary, we went with Small Areas unless they needed to be split, but that is but one approach.
oscarBravo wrote: » No, the boundaries don't exist, because routing keys don't define geographic areas. Eircodes belong to routing keys, and you can draw arbitrary lines between the locations of Eircodes that have different routing keys, but that doesn't make the routing keys geographic areas, and they don't have boundaries. You're arguing that because it's possible to create arbitrary geographic areas that closely approximate the extent of routing keys, that that somehow proves that routing keys are geographic areas, and therefore should be treated as such for the purposes of criticism. It doesn't matter how much you want routing keys to be geographic areas; they're not. So, back to the point that started this discussion: the fact that the lines that border arbitrary areas used to visualise routing keys are ipso facto arbitrary doesn't "say it all"; it doesn't really say anything at all. It's basically a truism.
plodder wrote: » That's a bit of a red herring tbh. PDverse has produced a map. Gamma produced a nice map also and they look much the same. So, the boundaries do exist and there isn't much doubt about them (except maybe for offshore uninhabited islands ..)
plodder wrote: » How does eircode make that simpler? They are presumably referring to areas using the names that people already know. The only thing that Eircode can add, that people might know about, is the routing key and we can see that routing key areas are mostly quite large. On the postcode lottery question. Where was that declared in the requirements for your work? Where were the issues debated before that happened? This is an important question of public policy. It shouldn't have been left as an arbitrary design decision in a project like this.
plodder wrote: » It shouldn't have been left as an arbitrary design decision in a project like this.
PDVerse wrote: » When you go to myhome.ie or daft.ie they display the actual property price sales for an area so you can determine this information now, for free. http://www.daft.ie/price-register/ Eircode makes this process much simpler for daft, they already use Google Maps.
plodder wrote: » I've asked this before. Who decided this, and why?
plodder wrote: » On what basis will google "know" this information? .
