Feature

From Document Manager Magazine Vol 17 No 03 - May/June 2009

There is a great deal more to choosing the right scanning solution for your organisation than simply comparing throughput speeds or even paper handling, argues Scott Maurer, Vice-President of Marketing, OPEX Corporation

For years, scanner manufacturers have competed to see which device could capture the most pages per minute. In this analysis, the faster the scanner, the better it must be. If a scanner was rated at 50 pages per minute and another scanner could capture 100 pages per minute, the latter was deemed to be better. Then, however, users realised that rated capture speed was only one factor that affected scanner throughput - paper handling was also important.

Therefore, scanner manufacturers worked to make sure that their device's paper handling capabilities improved. As this came about, sure enough the actual capture rate increased without any increase in rated throughput. So, now the scanner manufacturers had it figured out; not only did the scanner belts need to go fast; they also needed to handle the paper well enough to capitalise on that speed. Nirvana, it seemed, had been attained. Once the paper - in pristine prepped condition - reached the scanner, the scanner could gobble through it in no time. The only workflow elements to compare were rated speeds and paper handling ability. If a scanner manufacturer was near the top in each they were "golden"; they had the answer to the problem of too much paper. Prep Steps: It did not take long, however, for scanner users to realise that paper did not reach the organisation in pristine condition. It actually took numerous man hours to prepare the paper so that the scanners could handle it properly. Scanner

manufacturers continued to say that what mattered was speed of belts and paper handling; of course, they were talking of the ability to handle prepped paper. So, the race was on for faster machines with the capability of handling hundreds of pages per minute.

The prep work necessary to feed the beast would just have to be accepted. This sacrifice of labour hours was necessary to keep the scanner happy; it was akin to sacrificing a virgin to keep the god of the volcano happy. No one quite knew why it worked, but it did.

After-sscan Operations: Customers were encouraged not to look beyond the scanner room in their workflow analysis. Vendors feared that if they did they would see that the rest of the process was burning from both ends. Not only was there an inordinate amount of prep work necessary to get the documents ready for scanning, but there was also an unnecessary imbalance in the post scanning workload.

Instead of the work being released at an even, steady pace, it was being dumped all at one time. The mega- scanners that could capture up to hundreds of pages per minute made it expedient and almost necessary to run several batches at a time and release them to the back-end software virtually all at once. Those working from the image were not able to balance the load evenly over the day.

In many cases if money was involved, the processing window for the scanned work was very tight. If the work was held until a significant quantity had been accumulated thus justifying the throwing of the scanner switch, valuable keying and correction time was sacrificed. Even if money was not involved, valuable time to respond to a customer's query or react to some other document was being wasted.

To make up for this "narrowing of the

processing window", back end keying and correction steps had to be significantly beefed up in the later hours of the day. While one could argue that the overall man hours necessary to perform these functions would still remain constant, (an argument that is questionable at best) one could not argue that the impact on equipment and stations necessary to perform the task was negligible.

If 100,000 documents need keying and correcting and the window to perform those tasks is cut in half, then the amount of equipment and stations necessary to perform the task is doubled. And the uncertainty of meeting the window could increase that number by even more.

So, faster scanners have resulted in problems on either side of the scanning process: first, in the prep work necessary to get the paper in the right condition, and second, in the workflow implications for keying and correction. This might seem to suggest that one should look for a slow scanner that doesn't handle paper very well! This, of course, is not the case.

GET PAPER OUT OF THE PROCESS ASAP

The real solution lies in a scanner that is implemented as seamlessly into the overall process as possible. A scanner that can handle paper without the need for extensive prep; a scanner that balances the flow to the back-end processes; a scanner that turns the documents from paper to electronics as early in the process as possible.

Such a scanner would need to allow the operator to review the document in as short a time as possible and scan it immediately instead of sorting it to a stack to be scanned later. The scanner would require an absolute minimal amount of prep; it would need to capture documents as close to the source as necessary and allow the release of captured images to the back

end processors as early in the day as possible. The release of the work should be paced and balanced or even weighted toward the beginning of the day. The scanner should reduce consumables as much as possible.

THE OPEX APPROACH

By making the proper choice a scanning operation can impact savings in departments upstream and downstream and help the whole organisation to have a smoother, more consistent flow of information. As the department becomes a true informatiti centre, the promises of Enterprise Content Management can be more fully realised.

The AS3600 family of scanners from OPEX meets and exceeds the above criteria. When looking at the true throughput of the scanning process, the AS3600 family comes out on top. The need for prep work is by far the lowest in the industry, the operator does not need to insert header pages or perform extensive prep. The operator only need look at the document and drop it on the open conveyor feeder. No adjustments are necessary for handling different size pieces of paper and no operator intervention is necessary for determining most common document types. The AS3600 family is capable of capturing 3600 duplex images per hour. These images are released to the back end processes as soon as a batch is completed thus providing a more balanced flow of work for keying and correcting staff.

This also allows the documents to reach their final destination in a timely manner. The entire enterprise has access to the documents and the information contained therein faster: the workflow advantages of the AS3600 family not only affect the scanning step, they ripple throughout the organisation. More info: www.opex.com

Feature