User Guide

Automated Forms Processing
Specifying verification options.
Selecting a scanner
Choosing the right scanner is important because scanners have
a direct impact on the speed and quality of processing. It should be
noted that if you need to process more than 100 forms per day com
mon flatbed scanners will not do. Such scanners are widely used in
offices throughout the world to digitise photos and documents, but
they are not suitable for industry data capture, because they are too
slow and have a small inservice lifetime. After scanning 1,000 pages
the lid of a flatbed scanner may just fall off!
To scan large numbers of forms quickly and reliably you need
a special scanner.Here is a list of scanner features to look for:

Paper format. Usually forms are scanned using A3, A4 and A5
scanners.

Resolution. Forms must be scanned at 200300 dpi and all
scanners support this resolution. Higher resolutions will
inevitably slow down the entire process

Duplex scanning. Many projects require scanners that can run
in both duplex and simplex modes and scan either in black
andwhite or in colour. The latter is required when removing
colour seals from images or when saving colour photos from
questionnaires.

Automatic Document Feeder (ADF).
This device allows you to load batches of 25, 50, or 100 docu
ments into the scanner. This is a must have, otherwise the
operator will spend 90% of his time feeding paper documents
into the scanner.

Throughput. Very often the overall speed of processing
depends on the speed of scanning. In terms of throughput,
scanners can be divided into the following three groups: office
lowthroughput scanners, office mediumthroughput scanners,
and production scanners with very high throughput. Lowend
office scanners have a throughput of up to 500 pages per day
while productions scanners may scan more than 20,000 pages
per day.

Page feeder. If the scanner accidentally takes in two form pages
at a time, this may result in some of the pages not processed at
all. To prevent this from happening, many scanners have a spe
cial control mechanism which weighs paper sheets, measures
their thickness or measures the light that may penetrate them.
But these methods do not work if the forms are not homoge
neous (i.e. printed on different kinds of paper, have different
colours and paper thickness, etc.). The solution is to use ultra
sonic sensors which make sure that the signal has been reflected
only from one surface, i.e. from one page.

Additional features. Some scanners may have a number of
additional features which may also come in useful
 An endorser or a builtin printer that prints on scanned
documents an index that is then used to identify them;
 A hardware image enhancement module;
 A hardware image compression module;
 Colour lamps that can remove certain backgrounds (so
called dropout colours  red, blue or green);
 Caching images in the scanner's onboard memory, which
makes for faster scanning.