National foreword

This British Standard is the UK implementation of EN 13850:2020. It supersedes BS EN 13850:2012, which is withdrawn.

The UK participation in its preparation was entrusted to Technical Committee SVS/4, Postal services.

A list of organizations represented on this committee can be obtained on request to its committee manager.

This publication does not purport to include all the necessary provisions of a contract. Users are responsible for its correct application.

Compliance with a British Standard cannot confer immunity from legal obligations.

This British Standard was published under the authority of the Standards Policy and Strategy Committee on 30 June 2020.

This European Standard was approved by CEN on 27 April 2020.

CEN members are bound to comply with the CEN/CENELEC Internal Regulations which stipulate the conditions for giving this European Standard the status of a national standard without any alteration. Up-to-date lists and bibliographical references concerning such national standards may be obtained on application to the CEN-CENELEC Management Centre or to any CEN member.

This European Standard exists in three official versions (English, French, German). A version in any other language made by translation under the responsibility of a CEN member into its own language and notified to the CEN-CENELEC Management Centre has the same status as the official versions.

CEN members are the national standards bodies of Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Republic of North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and United Kingdom.

European foreword

This document (EN 13850:2020) has been prepared by Technical Committee CEN/TC 331 “Postal services”, the secretariat of which is held by NEN.

This European Standard shall be given the status of a national standard, either by publication of an identical text or by endorsement, at the latest by December 2020, and conflicting national standards shall be withdrawn at the latest by December 2020.

This document supersedes EN 13850:2012.

Attention is drawn to the possibility that some of the elements of this document may be the subject of patent rights. CEN shall not be held responsible for identifying any or all such patent rights.

The changes to the 2012 version are limited and concern editorial improvements and the correction of small errors. Without giving a complete overview, these points can be mentioned:

Definitions have been aligned with other ISO standards (accuracy 3.1, characteristic 3.7, estimator 3.27, inspection 3.32)
The definition of panellist has been added (3.39)
The maximum number of test letters per week per panellist has been explained in more detail in chapter 6.2.1
“Zone” has been changed to “area”
The independence of the auditor to the measurement has been further highlighted in chapter 8
The formula in the note concerning Table A1 has been corrected
In Annex H the issue of the handling by customs has been referred to
Annex J (changes to the 2007 version) has been deleted

This document has been prepared under a mandate given to CEN by the European Commission and the European Free Trade Association (Standardization request M/548), and supports essential requirements of EU Directive(s).

According to the CEN-CENELEC Internal Regulations, the national standards organisations of the following countries are bound to implement this European Standard: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Republic of North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and the United Kingdom.

Introduction

General

The European Commission emphasises the need to have common rules for the development of community postal services and the improvement of Quality-of-Service (QoS). The Commission has identified requirements for postal QoS-Measurement systems that include:

Independent end-to-end measurement capabilities;
A focus on national and cross-border distribution service performance;
A single, uniform and reliable system for monitoring distribution service performance within the Union.

The Commission has acknowledged that the different postal traditions and cultures in Europe would not allow for the establishment of one common unified European measurement system and that national systems should have sufficient freedom to reflect national needs and peculiarities. On the other hand, they should fulfil a defined set of minimum requirements to satisfy the information interests of the European Commission, the regulatory authority, postal customers and postal operators themselves. Any regulatory authority is free to adapt to national circumstances where the standard gives room to do so. This is explained further in Annex E.

The objective of the measurement is to estimate the end-to-end transit time QoS given to the customer domestically in each European country and cross-border between the European countries. This European Standard refers to a number of principles and minimum requirements to be applied for the measurement of the end-to-end transit time service level.

Regulatory background

The regulatory basis of EN 13850 is laid out in the 97/67/EC, as amended by Directive 2002/39/EC and Directive 2008/6/EC.

Main guidance is given in Chapter 6 Quality of Service. Article 16 states: “Member States shall ensure that quality-of-service standards are set and published in relation to Universal Service in order to guarantee a postal service of good quality”.

Furthermore, EN 13850 is mandatory for measuring the performance levels of single piece priority or first class mail which falls under the universal service1.

For intra-community cross-border mail of the fastest standard category a minimum QoS level is laid down in the Directive 97/67/EC. At least 85 % of all letters shall have an end-to-end transit time of J+3 and less and at least 97 % of all letters shall have an end-to-end transit-time of J+5 and less.2

The mandate for this revised version of EN 13850:2020 is the Standardization request (M/548) of the European Commission which asked CEN/TC 331 to “revise existing standards" and to cover the topic "a method for transit time measurement for cross border postal items" in order to satisfy regulatory needs.

1 Scope

This document specifies methods for measuring the end-to-endtransit time of domestic and cross-border Single Piece Priority Mail (SPPM), collected, processed and delivered by postal service operators. It considers methods using representative end-to-end samples for all types of single piece priority mail services for addressed mail with defined transit-time service levels offered to the customer. This document is applicable to the measurement of End-to-End priority mail services.

The standardised QoS-measurement method provides a uniform way for measuring the end-to-endtransit time of postal items. Using a standardised measurement method will assure that the measurement will be done in an objective and equal way for all operators in accordance with the requirements of the Directive 97/67/EC and its amendments.

It is not the purpose of this document to measure the postal operators’ overall performance in a way that provides direct comparison of postal service providers.

This document relates to the measurement of the SPPM services given to household and business customers that post mail at street letterboxes, over the counter at post offices or have pick-ups at their offices. To cover flows with smaller mail volumes this document includes flexibility areas for adapted implementation. For technical reasons this document may not be suitable for the measurement of very small volumes of mail.

The end-to-end service measured may be provided by one operator or by a group of operators working either together in the same distribution chain or parallel in different distribution chains. This document is not applicable for the measurement of end-to-endtransit times in fields of study with more than one induction operator (Multi-Operator Environments), which require different methodologies. The method for end-to-end measurement specified in this document is also not designed to provide results for the measurement of parts of the distribution chain.

This document is not applicable for the measurement of end-to-endtransit times of bulk mailers’ services and hybrid mail, which require different measurement systems and methodologies (see, for example, EN 14534 Measurement of the transit time of end-to-end services of bulk mail).

This document includes specifications for the quality control and auditing of the measurement system.

This document does not specify:

the minimum acceptable level of accuracy that will be required by the national regulatory authority;
the target(s) that the regulatory authority might set;
how the regulatory authority should determine whether the target(s) have been met.

2 Normative references

3 Terms and definitions

4 Symbols and abbreviations

5 Transit time as a Quality-of-Service indicator

5.1 General

5.2 Transit time calculation

5.3 Service performance indicators

6 Methodology

6.1 Representative sample design

6.2 Minimum Sample Size (MSS)

6.3 Determination of the design basis

6.4 Discriminant Mail Characteristics (DMC)

6.5 Geographical distribution of the panel

6.6 Integrity of the measurement

6.7 Unbiased sample design

7 Report

7.1 Measurement results

7.2 Estimators

7.3 Weighting of the results

7.4 Content and timing

8 Quality control and auditing

9 The annexes

Bibliography

BS EN 13850:2020

Postal services. Quality of services. Measurement of the transit time of end-to-end services for single piece priority mail and first class mail

Current, Under Review

Published:

30 Sep 2020