OCR Software and Solution for Traffic & Logistics Industry

1. Form Recognition System for Metro-North Railroad

The client is a division of the largest public transportation provider in the US, serving 14.6 million commuters spreading over 5,000 square miles including New York City, south east New York and Connecticut. It’s agencies now transport nearly 2.4 billion rail and bus passengers a year and the client division alone transports 3.5 million passengers every day.

To supervise on-the-job performance of train conductors and engineers, to better serve the public, the Federal Railways Administration (FRA) requires transportation agents to keep detailed logs of the daily operations of train conductors. As the largest public transportation agency in New York, the client receives periodic and random inspections from the FRA on its operation logs. In the past, logs were prepared on a daily basis by train conductors, before being manually entered into the database at the processing center. Because manual entry is time consuming and prone to errors, the client often experienced update delays and false entries resulting in large fines by the FRA.

To improve their compliance to FRA rules and control their operating center’s costs, the client wanted to develop and implement an automatic forms recognition system. Based on the design requirements, the system should recognize the print fonts and hand-written symbols on the log forms, and import them to the agencies’ database.

The system structure was described as follows:

We used double-sided scanners to automatically scan the forms in batches.
The scanned images are automatically imported to the Image Pool by the Form-processing module. The Watch-folder module checks for unprocessed images, which would be sent to the Form-Processing module automatically. The whole recognition and monitoring process required no manual interference from the client’s staff.
After the images are scanned, recognized and converted into XML format, they are saved in the XML database. These files will be used as interim files to be imported into the Batch-Proofing module for correction and confirmation before being used to update the original XML database and eventually imported to Access or Excel in CSV format.
To improve the FRA’s inspection process, an Access Interface was created to make FRA browse electric images of diver log forms as well as the processed reports.

In the Forms Recognition System, forms processing and result checking are key factors to the system’s accuracy and efficiency.

2. Drive Log Processing

A truck or railroad company has to process a large amount of daily logs which are filled out by drivers to comply with the US federal labor law – the Duty Status Requirements of 49 CFR Section 395.8, which requires the driver log data to be accurately digitized, recognized and ready for government investigation at any time. Without automatic software, it has to be done manually, costing too much labor and generating too many errors to comply with the law.

ExperVision^®’s solution consists of the following:

The recognition kernel equipped with ExperVision^®’s world known award-winning OCR technology to process handwritten characters, optical marks, barcode and schedule charts on the logs at 95% plus recognition rate.
XML technology to ensure data accessibility through different systems, especially for government agencies to investigate.
Automation by utilizing online service to streamline the workflow from log scanning, image uploading, recognition, proofreading, formatting, exporting, to uploading the result for internal and external review.
BPO Service: ExperVision^® also runs a BPO Center located in China, which provides 7 *24 hours verification and proofing Service through Internet to guarantee data accuracy.

3. Check Processing

It is a common and daily operational task to accept and process checks as a form of payment in any companies, especially in retail, utility, online and offline merchant industries, etc., which we call merchants collectively. Typical check processing consists of many tedious, costly and error prone steps. These include converting paper-based checks into electronic transactions, processing transactions through the ACH network or Check 21 image exchange network, automating returned check re-presentment, generating real-time reports and supporting proactive risk management.

ExperVision^® has been helping various merchants meet their challenges in check processing through our innovative solution.

ExperVision^®’s check processing system helps a company complete the process from check image capture, recognition, storing, proofing, passing to various payment gateways for transaction, to archiving for analysis and other purposes. Following is a description of how the check processing system works with the Payment Processor, ACH Network and Check 21 Image Exchange Network all together to help the merchant collect payments.

4. Invoice & Shipping Receipt Processing

A company receives large amount of invoices from various third parties including vendors, daily service providers, contract engineering providers, etc. These invoices need timely processing and many departments are involved in the verification and approval process. Statistics show that, 96% of the invoices are on paper and have to be processed manually, which makes the cost as high as $10.15 per invoice. With manual processing, mistakes such as incorrect calculation, duplicate payments, inability to transfer to correct department and even the loss of some invoices can occur.

ExperVision^®’s invoice and receipt processing system completes the process from invoice scanning, recognition, storing, passing to various departments for verification and approval, to archiving for analysis and other purposes. The invoice recognition module employs ExperVision^®’s world champion OCR to process data such as vendor information, product items and prices, account number, amount, date, etc.

5. Resume Processing

Although electronic resumes have been more and more popular since the late 90s, massive paper materials, e.g. fax, letters and post are still used and mixed with electronic ones in both job application and human resource (HR) management. To guarantee not missing any qualified candidate, it takes a significant amount of time and effort to include the information on paper in the human resource software system.

ExperVision^®’s Resume Processing Solution (RPS) is a suite of intelligent and enterprise level resume capturing & processing tools, which can automatically process resumes from any e-mail & attachment, job board, corporate web site, fax and paper, enabling the HR department to efficiently attract and hire qualified job applicants. The Resume Recognition module in the system employs ExperVision^®’s world champion OCR to process data such as contact, location, skills summary, education history, work experience, etc.

6. Paper Based Workflow Management

In many industries, the company sends their staff outside of the office to provide complicated service, including on-site measurement, customized design, material preparation, on-site installation, maintenance and/or other activities. The traditional way to manage out-of-office activities is to use paper work-orders and worksheets, which leads to many problems such as difficult to track the workflow information, misreading information on paper, and unable to quickly search and index wanted information on worksheets. These problems generally degrade workflow efficiency, waste resources and destroy customer satisfaction.

ExperVision^®’s Paper Based Workflow Management system provides whole workflow management by including the traditional paper work-order and worksheet in the control loop, while allowing the staff to work exactly the way they were working before.