Synopsis
I worked with IBM Haifa Research Laboratory to provide Optical Character Recognition for both Machine Print and Hand Print to be used with their disambiguation for the Deutsche Post Parcel Sorting Machine. In addition, the requirements to build a Video Coding System were more demanding due to limited amount of time and lack of resources. I was asked to build the VCS within a month for demonstration and given two months for installation and testing. The VCS system written for Swiss PP2000 was inadequate and I had to completely redesign and write a brand new Coding Station. With the help of Sean McCauliff, I was able to complete the implementation of the Coding Station. SriGanesh Madhvanath and I designed a setup tool for the Coding Station. This has been extended to work with the supervisor control and dispatcher portions of the Video Coding System. The novelty of the work has been that for the first time a GUI program has been written to program another GUI program.
Technology
The IBM VCS subsystem results in a better utilization of resources for the rejected mail pieces of IBM ARS. This competitive solution minimizes the amount of keyboard interaction from the operator to reduce potential typing errors, since the operators employed in video coding have very little keyboard skills. The system is robust and easily configurable to meet the requirements from different countries. The Video Coding System works in three different modes (interactive, non-interactive and manual) of operation to better utilize the performance of the operators and the underlying address interpretation system.
VCS is implemented in a distributed architecture. The video coding station as a client provides the user interface and an optional address interpretation functions. The video coding dispatcher provides the interface to the Address Recognition System on one side and handles requests and management of video coding stations on the other side. The VCS Coding Station (VCS-C) is designed with the following goals in mind: ease of use, configurability, minimizing user keystrokes, maximizing the size of the displayed image without distortion. The selection of things like fonts, color, and coding modes is completely up to the IT manager of the VCS system, who can base this on operator comments.
User input is centered on input panels. An input panel is a window, which contains fields, such as zip or city. Each coding mode (ABC, FAC, ZFC, ZHC, QAC and QFC) can have one or more input panels associated with it. These panels can be bound to a key and an address coder can manually switch to the appropriate panel or the coding station can automatically change to the correct panel when it has enough information to do so.
Swiss PP2000
I worked with IBM Haifa Research Laboratory, Israel to deliver an Address Recognition System for the Swiss PP2000 project. In addition to providing various enhancements, due to the superior technology of the new Video Coding System, the old system was completely replaced and customized for the PP2000. I travelled to Switzerland 6 times to provide consulting, integration, improvisation of VCS. The Manual Coding System (MCS) had been developed and made part of the entire Video Coding System. I implemented the deferred video coding and zip lookup as well when I was in Boeblingen to transfer the Almaden OCR and VCS technology to Germany.
Technology
The IBM Address Recognition System installed in PP2000 consists of OCR, CheckMate (for Address Interpretation), Video Coding System(VCS) and Manual Coding System(MCS). In addition, Sean McCauliff and I worked to customize the Video Coding System for PP2000. The various customization's include user interactions, key bindings and postal specific requirements for address interpretation, manual coding system, deferred video coding system, zip lookup and support for various zip types.
If a VCS coder is confronted now with a ZIP code which the systems does not accept his left on his own to know it. If he is not able to resolve it he sends the parcel to MCS. In MCS coders look up misspelled (in most cases), missing or replacements of no longer used ZIP codes in lists which most of the time are outdated. If they are not able to resolve them the hand the parcel to the supervisor.
Deferred Video Coding
The deferred video coding (DVC) was a very specific requirement from the Swiss PP2000 team. The purpose of this function was to sort parcels rather quickly by letting the operator enter zip code. If the zip required street processing, then the request would be deferred and only the zip code is sent. This had to be done taking into consideration if the parcel was either addressed to remote parcel distribution center or for near destinations.
Zip-Lookup: What was needed in VCS and MCS is the ZIP code search function. The purpose of the function was to give the coder a simple search function for misspelled, missing or replacements of no longer used ZIP codes based on the actual Swiss Post master data. The function had to be simple and integrated in the coding process and the results automatically should be taken over in the coding process.