Method of manually merging postal articles with a stack of mailpieces that are already sorted

A method of merging postal articles with a stack of mailpieces that have already been machine-sorted into a certain sorting order, said method being characterized in that it comprises the following steps:

• inserting the postal articles in sequence into a sorting frame having slots so that the postal articles are in said certain sorting order, the frame being designed to enable said postal articles to be taken manually in handfuls;
• placing said stack of mailpieces on a merge table in the vicinity of said frame;
• displaying an indication on a display screen of a monitoring and control unit that keeps in a memory sorting data for the sequence of postal articles and sorting data for the stack of mailpieces, which indication is representative both of an insertion position at which the postal articles should be inserted into the stack of mailpieces, and also of a number of postal articles to be taken from the frame and to be merged with said stack of mailpieces at said insertion position;
• manually taking from said frame said number of postal articles indicated on the screen, and inserting said postal articles into the stack of mailpieces at said insertion position indicated on the screen;
• and
• having said monitoring and control unit measure first and second distances relative to the first postal article in the sorting frame at the head of the sequence respectively before and after said number of postal articles indicated on the screen are taken, and, on the basis of these two distance measurements, if the monitoring and control unit detects an error in the taking of the postal articles from the frame, having said unit generate an error signal.