• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, March 15, 2016

Pitney Bowes, founded in 1920, has created a method to pull in data from each of its Internet-connected mail machines located at individual corporations worldwide. The platform analyzes the data in real-time to improve the way those responsible at banks, telecom carriers and other large corporations manage their physical mail.

The Clarity suite, a software-as-a-service offering supported by cloud computing, announced Tuesday, integrates and organizes data collected from sensors on production mail machines that can process 30,000 pieces of mail hourly. They support real-time insight, predictive analytics, and prescriptive maintenance. 

Jason Dies, president of document messaging technologies at Pitney Bowes, believes the move reinvents the production of the physical mail industry. He said it's about bringing matures industries to the industrial Internet, with offerings that will evolve over time.

"You could use this information for tracking and recording to prove the mail got to its destination," he said. "In time, you will see a range of offerings through the 50 billion devices that will connect to the Internet by 2020."

Hosted on General Electric's Predix platform, Clarity represents the first commercially available solution generated by Pitney Bowes’ collaboration with GE to bring data to the production mail industry. 

Rather than look at one individual piece of machine to help the customer gain efficiency, Pitney Bowes will pull all data from multiple machines in one location into cloud servers, analyze it, and send it back to the customer. That way, the company can gain a view of how their entire production floor runs in real-time, how they compare to industry benchmarks, and where they can make improvements.

"It is a seven-by-24-hour a day look," Dies said. "We can analyze information remotely and in some cases, make the changes remotely."

The data collected from the machines provides insight into various operations, such as scheduling and maintenance. Knowing impressions made on each machine, gives Pitney Bowes the ability to predict the type of replacement parts needed, for example.

The company will store specific parts, based on history and historic error rates, close to the customer's location in order to improve maintenance.

"I could envision using the data to drive compliance, being able to track individual pieces of mail," Dies said, "Connecting machines and devices is the first step, and collecting the data is the next."