1、raising standards worldwideNO COPYING WITHOUT BSI PERMISSION EXCEPT AS PERMITTED BY COPYRIGHT LAWBSI Standards PublicationPostal services Open interface SortplanPD CEN/TS 16316:2012National forewordThis Published Document is the UK implementation of CEN/TS 16316:2012.The UK participation in its prep
2、aration was entrusted to Technical CommitteeSVS/4, Postal services.A list of organizations represented on this committee can be obtained onrequest to its secretary.This publication does not purport to include all the necessary provisions of acontract. Users are responsible for its correct applicatio
3、n. The British Standards Institution 2012Published by BSI Standards Limited 2012ISBN 978 0 580 75925 3ICS 03.240; 35.240.99Compliance with a British Standard cannot confer immunity fromlegal obligations.This Published Document was published under the authority of theStandards Policy and Strategy Com
4、mittee on 31 July 2012.Amendments issued since publicationAmd. No. Date Text affectedPUBLISHED DOCUMENTPD CEN/TS 16316:2012TECHNICAL SPECIFICATION SPCIFICATION TECHNIQUE TECHNISCHE SPEZIFIKATION CEN/TS 16316 June 2012 ICS 03.240; 35.240.99 English Version Postal services - Open interface - Sortplan
5、Services postaux - Interface ouverte - Plan de tri Postalische Dienstleistungen - Offene Schnittstelle - Sortierplan This Technical Specification (CEN/TS) was approved by CEN on 9 January 2012 for provisional application. The period of validity of this CEN/TS is limited initially to three years. Aft
6、er 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 promp
7、tly at national level in an appropriate form. 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, B
8、ulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and United Kingdom. EUROPEAN CO
9、MMITTEE FOR STANDARDIZATION COMIT EUROPEN DE NORMALISATION EUROPISCHES KOMITEE FR NORMUNG Management Centre: Avenue Marnix 17, B-1000 Brussels 2012 CEN All rights of exploitation in any form and by any means reserved worldwide for CEN national Members. Ref. No. CEN/TS 16316:2012: EPD CEN/TS 16316:20
10、12CEN/TS 16316:2012 (E) 2 Contents Page Foreword 3Introduction .41 Scope 52 Normative references 53 Terms and definitions .54 Format .65 Definition of sort plan concepts .65.1 Sort plan concepts general .65.2 Definition of SortingProducts .65.2.1 Item related .65.2.2 Machine related 75.3 Definition
11、of Cards .75.4 Definition of Actions 75.4.1 Sort to outlets .75.4.2 Sequence mail 75.4.3 Print on label .85.4.4 Show on display .85.4.5 Print on mail item .85.4.6 Sweep 86 Structure of the sort plan file 86.1 Sort Plan .86.1.1 General 86.1.2 Flag 96.1.3 MailAttribute 106.1.4 Card 106.1.5 SortingProd
12、uct 116.1.6 Destination . 116.1.7 CardRequest 126.1.8 SpecialSort . 126.2 OutletGroup . 126.3 SweepGroup 136.4 Action . 146.4.1 General considerations 146.4.2 Sort . 146.4.3 Print 156.4.4 Sweep . 157 Precedence rules 157.1 General considerations 157.2 Sorting Product . 167.3 Action . 168 Implementat
13、ion chart . 16Annex A (informative) XML data 17A.1 XML data structure . 17A.2 Example of Destination Sort Plan . 29A.3 Example of Sequence Sort Plan 30PD CEN/TS 16316:2012CEN/TS 16316:2012 (E) 3 Foreword This document (CEN/TS 16316:2012) has been prepared by Technical Committee CEN/TC 331 “Postal Se
14、rvices”, the secretariat of which is held by NEN. Attention is drawn to the possibility that some of the elements of this document may be the subject of patent rights. CEN and/or CENELEC shall not be held responsible for identifying any or all such patent rights. This document has been prepared unde
15、r a mandate given to CEN by the European Commission and the European Free Trade Association. According to the CEN/CENELEC Internal Regulations, the national standards organizations of the following countries are bound to announce this Technical Specification: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyp
16、rus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and the United Kingdom. PD CEN/TS 16316:2012CEN/TS 1
17、6316:2012 (E) 4 Introduction In a very generic postal system architecture, an Information System manages the creation, production and life cycle of sort plans. This Information System is also responsible for distributing sort plans to Sorting Machines. Sorting machines use several configuration file
18、s. A sort plan is a kind of configuration file dedicated to the description of sorting operations executed by a sorting machine. Sorting operations are mainly the assignment of mail items to physical outlets, the display text and the tray labels. As both, the Information System and the several types
19、 of Sorting Machines, have to interpret this sort plan file. This file format therefore is the interface between them. In order to optimise performance, there is a growing demand of the postal operators to combine parts of their sorting automation equipment from different suppliers. In the past this
20、 has led to project-specific interfaces being negotiated between one postal operator and one or multiple suppliers. These project-specific interfaces were developed by the suppliers and maintained for an agreed period of time. However, this approach has several disadvantages: the interface is derive
21、d from an interface that was not intended to be open; the interface is developed for a single project and works only in the context of that project (extra costs); each participating supplier has to implement the interface (multiple efforts); experience shows that integration of components with proje
22、ct-specific interfaces is complex and expensive; project-specific interfaces are not integrated into the product line and once the initially agreed maintenance period is over it may be difficult and expensive to maintain and/or may hinder the adoption of equipment upgrades. This has led to “open int
23、erfaces” defined by one supplier. Yet these still have the disadvantage of being in product use only by one supplier. Within a group of postal operators and suppliers, it was decided to develop a set of “open standard interfaces” which will be developed by the suppliers and referred to by the postal
24、 operators. It was explained that the benefits of these interfaces will be that they: are fixed in an international standard (with change control); are agreed and implemented by major suppliers; are agreed by customers and therefore used in calls for tenders; will result in net savings, higher initi
25、al development effort and consequent higher basic equipment prices being more than offset by reduced project development, integration and maintenance costs; will minimize the need for project integration effort by reducing implementation timescales; will increase competition between suppliers by sti
26、mulating product improvements. This technical specification is based on the “Common Sortplan Format“ which was used in projects before this standard was developed. PD CEN/TS 16316:2012CEN/TS 16316:2012 (E) 5 1 Scope This Technical Specification specifies the sort plan file content and structure. It
27、does not deal with other configuration files in sorting machines nor is it applicable to the transport mechanism. The content of a sort plan allows the specification of the following capabilities: sorting by address and non-address attributes; sorting of code ranges; sorting of rejects; support of d
28、isplay and label texts; dynamic outlet groups; sorting to more than one outlet; overflow handling; support of cut off time before dispatch; sequence sorting; provide volume information (option); support of Cards; possibility to add simple manufacturer specific information; support of various sort co
29、de formats and non-address attributes; support of various display and label formats; check against characteristics of the sorting machine. 2 Normative references There are no normative references for this document. 3 Terms and definitions 3.1 configuration file one of the different files specifying
30、actions to be processed by a sorting machine during operation time 3.2 configuration file set complete set of configuration files needed by a machine to operate at a given time PD CEN/TS 16316:2012CEN/TS 16316:2012 (E) 6 3.3 cut off time time to empty a certain outlet of a machine for dispatch 3.4 d
31、ispatch time time when the transport leaves the sorting centre 3.5 dynamic outlet groups outlets automatically assigned by the Machine Control during processing operation according to a defined set of rules 3.6 outlet output bin or stacker of a sorting machine 3.7 separation characterization of a pa
32、rt of the mail flow processed by a machine 3.8 sort plan configuration file specifying sort operations, that is, the assignment of mail items to outlets 4 Format The sort plans are exchanged as Unicode text files, and are therefore printable: Unicode 16 bits is used. As a deviation, the Unicode 32 b
33、its could be used if necessary. The encoding used is the UTF 8 standard. The XML language is used to describe the content of a sort plan. As such, a sort plan can be validated against a formal specification, which can be found in A.1. 5 Definition of sort plan concepts 5.1 Sort plan concepts general
34、 This Clause defines the main concepts of the sort plan; the structural details are given in Clause 6. The sort plan consists mainly of defining the sorting products (what is sorted), the cards and the actions performed on these sorting products. 5.2 Definition of Sorting Products 5.2.1 Item related
35、 Item related conditions are attached to and travel with the mail item (i.e. they are intrinsic to the mail item). The format supports classifying mail by the following item related attributes: a) destination; NOTE Destination is expressed by a sortcode. b) other item attributes. PD CEN/TS 16316:201
36、2CEN/TS 16316:2012 (E) 7 EXAMPLE Priority or MailFormat. 5.2.2 Machine related Machine related conditions describe events that occur on a machine, but will often not travel with the mail item. These are referred to as special sorts. EXAMPLE Mechanical reject or overflow. The format supports building
37、 reasonably complex classifications. Please note that in reality classifications are typically built from either item-related or machine-related conditions but not from both. 5.3 Definition of Cards Cards are typically used to separate the mail in the outlet during sequence sorting. The sort plan su
38、pports the following information: a) definition of a Card; b) request for a Card at a specific position in the sequence of mail. 5.4 Definition of Actions 5.4.1 Sort to outlets The most important action is to sort a mail item to a given outlet or a group of outlets. Specifying the destination on the
39、 machine comes in two options: Static outlet allocation. The specified outlet points to a physical outlet on the machine. If more than one outlet is specified, these should all be used for the same classification and effectively just form a “bigger outlet”. The machine can decide if it wants to fill
40、 up the outlets of a group one after the other or all at the same time. Dynamic outlet allocation. This only makes sense when more than one outlet is specified. The machine chooses an outlet for the first mail item of each classification and sorts subsequent mail items of the same classification to
41、the same outlet until the outlet is emptied. In theory, the number of SortingProducts can exceed the number of outlets as long as not all products “occur” at the same time. A group of outlets may be defined either by enumerating the names of the outlets or by indicating the number of outlets needed
42、in this group. 5.4.2 Sequence mail Mail can be sequenced using two or more passes. Either a separate sort plan for each pass or a single sort plan that contains enough information so the machine knows what to do in each pass can be used. The latter is the more elegant solution because the machine ca
43、n make better use of volume information gathered in the first pass. In order to sequence mail, the sort plan includes the following information: the walk position of each destination within its respective postman walk; the fact that this mail shall be sequenced (in case not all mail that is fed to t
44、his sort plan shall be sequenced); optionally volume information, so the machine can allocate enough outlets. PD CEN/TS 16316:2012CEN/TS 16316:2012 (E) 8 5.4.3 Print on label Mail bundles are often shipped with a label that is printed on-demand by a label printer. The labels contain Text and often a
45、 Barcode. Label layouts. Sometimes different label layouts requiring different fields are in use. The format allows for the use of different label layouts. Literal content. Most label fields will contain literal text, i.e. text that shall be printed verbatim or printed as a barcode. Variable content
46、. Some fields may be populated with keywords that will be evaluated at runtime. A typical example is the current date. This specification does not prescribe the list nor describes the format of such keywords. 5.4.4 Show on display Displays are treated in basically the same manner as labels except Di
47、splays are usually much simpler than Labels. A regular two lines Display will typically accept only a single Format consisting of two lines of text. 5.4.5 Print on mail item This format has no special support for controlling the printing of barcodes or cancellation bitmaps on mail items. This should
48、 be done in separate configuration files. 5.4.6 Sweep Sometimes outlets need to be emptied at a certain point in time or when other conditions become true. This is referred to either as clearance times (sweep at a certain point in time), or sweep groups (sweep together with other Sorting Products).
49、The machine can use this information to either sweep some outlets with a robot or to signal a human operator what outlets to sweep. 6 Structure of the sort plan file 6.1 Sort plan 6.1.1 General The entire file is a single sort plan. In this clause, the file structure is described in a formal way. Practical examples are
