Scanning Increases in Breadth and Volume Boston MA

Anyone who has searched a local government's musty-smelling document library or the back of the engineer's office is looking at potential revenue for the scanner. But the versatility of the scanner in today's digital workflow means it can also scan to the Web, scan to an online archive center or planroom, or in addition to scan-to-file, copy, or print.

"There has been somewhat of a hypothesis that monochrome print volumes would go down as color increased," said Maxwell van Natter, product manager of Océ-USA's Wide-Format Printing Division, Chicago, IL. "What we're seeing is not only an increase in color, but we're seeing an increase in monochrome. The total print volumes are up and inevitably, when print volumes go up, scanning and copy services are increasing alongside them."

A versatile scanner can broaden work and revenue base, particularly since manufacturers are more in tune with a scanner's broadening reach.

Scan-to-archive is "the most basic use and it's still very popular," said Jackie Horn, director of worldwide marketing for Böwe Bell & Howell, LLC, Wheeling, IL. "Then there are some applications that are much more complex and rely on more advanced features and functionality, so we try and predict what will be the most time-saving features and those features that will enhance the ease of use, and try and cover a lot of different bases for customers in different situations."

Scanning isn't just for documents, either, according to Robert Gonzales, marketing manager for The Americas, for Contex, Herndon, VA. A tire company scan tires to archive the tire treads, he said, and "botanists scan leaves or plant items for global sharing or unique diseases or new plants. There are a lot of interesting applications out there—things we probably haven't even heard of yet."

Making Documents Secure

The post-9/11 jitters about legacy drawings only on paper has opened up business for planrooms or archive centers are popular, according to van Natter, plus lowers storage costs by storing on CDs, within servers, in online planrooms, or a combination of the three.

Ideal's MyArchiveCenter taps into the need to archive legacy documents, providing brick and mortar protection and beyond for documents scanned and archived by participating dealers. In addition to 256-bit encryption and SSL security, Larry Gottenberg, product manager for Ideal, Rockville, MD, says the servers are behind a fence with guards that check the facility.

The return on investment for the end-user to use such an archive system, says Jay Magenheim, Ideal's president, is to not have to search the back room to look for a misfiled blueprint. For the participating dealer, its revenue from each scan, Magenheim said, and "a road map for the reprographic industry to make money from digital and for our scanner dealers to make residual income from every large-format scanner customer."

Scanning Online Increasing

Scanners include sheet-fed, flatbed, and even drum scanners. Drum scanners use a Photo Multiplier Tube (PMT) and are often used in art galleries. But Haddon Stevens, vice president of Aztek, Irvine, CA, said, "Aztek still supports many 20-year-old drum scanners still capable in many areas of exceeding the highest priced flatbeds in performance."

Pairing scanners with the Internet involves scan of annotated or marked-up drawings to JPEG or PDF files to distribute them to a structural engineer worldwide.

"One of the real common things we see is an architect or an engineer gets his hands on a drawing—whether it's in paper or electronic format—and they mark it up and they have to get that to somebody—somebody at the job site or a consultant somewhere," said Randy Geesman, president of the Paradigm Imaging Group, Costa Mesa, CA, "In these days, the geography for the consultant's location has expanded."

Paradigm, which markets equipment in addition to being a scanning service bureau, is seeing scanners in front-end copy solutions or for various other uses. Reprographic customers often buy scanners with printers and scan-to-print software, he says.

Color—and sometimes struggles with how to charge for it—is increasing in use, said Van Natter. "What we're seeing is a shift where a lot of that color scanning is now being pushed back to the reprographer, because the reprographer can use the same workflows they use in a monochrome environment, but just go to color, and provide those same kinds of services to the end-user."

Must-haves In Scanners

For the service bureau or reprographic shop, the breadth of scanner choices is limitless, but there are some features on a scanner checklist:

• Flexibility and features to meet the demands of all your customers.
• Up to 1200 DPI or pixel-per-inch capability, Geesman said, as added resolution may be needed to enlarge. For color fidelity, 48-bit depth.
• Concurrency, said van Natter, allows a "user to do whatever job they need whenever they need it and without time delay." Seek scanners that take a job and begin processing it while a scan-to-file or copy job is being completed.
• Out-of-box capability for instant use of the scanner, including such items as catch trays, cables, scanner stand, and software.
• Software that de-skews the original and otherwise enhances the end product, plus allows templates that simplify common configurations such as "half-size TIFF."
• Software that checks all pixels in a document, rather than relying on a three to six-inch "smart scan" of the top.
• Capability to handle thicker documents. Geesman said some have capability to scan up to eight-tenths of an inch such as fine art mounted on stretchers.

Some people would put scanner speed at the top of the list, but the overall speed is part human-enabled, in addition to scanner speed.

"What it really comes down to is, 'How quickly can my user insert the document into the scanner and move it to either a digital environment or give me a copy," said van Natter. "So what I'm really looking for are tools that facilitate ease of use, throughput, ease error and ensure that it's fed one time and they get the correct output."

Neal McChristy is a freelance writer who has written about the office-equipment and wide-format industry for more than 11 years. He welcomes feedback about the articles he writes and would like to have readers suggest future topics. Contact him at nmcchristy@cox.net.