The Fleet and Industrial Supply Center (FISC), Puget Sound has created a regional consolidated mail facility (CMF). The Northwest Regional CMF joins the Navy’s six other CMF’s located in San Diego, Norfolk, Pearl Harbor, Washington D.C., Sigonella, Italy, and Yokohama, Japan and represents the latest Northwest regionalization milestone.

For the Navy, that means redundant processes and functions are eliminated, efficiency is increased, and taxpayer money is saved.

The CMF was created to standardize and achieve efficiency in mail processing, avoid duplication of efforts (manpower, equipment, transportation), reduce transit delivery times, and to save postage through the consolidation of outgoing official correspondence (when mail is consolidated and sent in bulk, the Navy benefits from cheaper postal rates). 

The new mail facility’s establishment required extensive work by master chief (ret) postal clerk Rick Buchart, the new regional postal operations manager, and by the 19 military, civil service, and contractors who perform mail functions for Navy Region Northwest.

So far though, just the first step of the new program has been realized with the stand-up of the CMF. There are still more hurdles to cross.

Buchart and Stephen Ventura of FISC Puget Sound’s Program Analyst Division are currently establishing postal address grids on NBK at Bremerton and Bangor, Naval Air Station Whidbey Island and Naval Station Everett.

“Once completed, address grids will have a positive impact on every aspect of mail movement though the region and will eventually result in even more reductions in postage costs,” Buchart said. 

The new CMF facility, housed at Bremerton, consolidates the mail metering operations of five naval commands and will soon add the mail operations of least two more. Although still in its infancy, the CMF has already found ways to save more than $75,000 in postal-related costs, and reduced the postage bill for the two million pieces of mail it handles annually by over 10 percent. The cost-reduction goal for fiscal year 2005 is 30 percent.

The unofficial postal service motto, “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds,” was demonstrated again as the creation of the new consolidated mail facility. For the most part, the transition was invisible to the more than 100 commands it serves. 

“Despite the hectic activity, the CMF never missed a delivery and that commendable achievement is directly attributable to the professionalism of the region’s military and civilian postal workers,” said Buchart. “They are already striving to accomplish the CMF goal of ‘timely, efficient, secure and dependable mail service.”