Patent ID: 7985939

Claim:
A method of sorting postal items for preparing postman's walks on a postal sorting machine having an inlet and a set of sorting outlets, said method comprising the steps of: loading a first batch of postal items and a second batch of postal items consecutively into the inlet of the machine, and directing the postal items of the first batch towards a first subset of sorting outlets, and the postal items of the second batch of postal items towards a second subset of sorting outlets that is separate from the first subset of sorting outlets; and while the postal items of the second batch of postal items are being directed towards the second subset of sorting outlets, reloading the inlet of the machine with the postal items taken from the first subset of sorting outlets, and, while the postal items of the first batch of postal items are being directed towards the first subset of sorting outlets, re-loading the inlet of the machine with the postal items taken from the second subset of sorting outlets; wherein the sorting machine is dimensioned with a number of sorting outlets Nbst per subset of sorting outlets that is defined by the following relationship: Nbst=√dpi× 1/√2 where dpi is the total number of delivery points of all of the postman's walks to be sequenced on the machine in two sorting passes.