Pinesoft - Developing Software and Systems that Support Business Growth
Solutions Clinic and New Product Development
- Innovative solutions by request -
Solutions to specific problems, issues and glitches
Our creative problem solving skills have earned us testimonials like this:
“This is a fantastic piece of equipment which prints a readable address every time. Dramatic efficiencies in our mail bagging operation, providing significant savings in the process which in turn led to increased competitiveness in the service offering.”
Mark Smith, Revenue Protection and Quality Manager, Swiss Post (International) UK
Our solutions clinic and new product development division offers clients the opportunity to bring specific problems to us to solve. Large or small a problem or process inefficiency slows down operations, wastes time and money, increases labour intensity, or simply frustrates and irritates.
- Do your operations have manual processes that could / should be automated?
- Do you suffer from slow processes due to sluggish / inefficient software?
- Are there specific (perhaps even micro) process problems that just irritate?
- Do you have stand-alone products that simply don’t do what it said on the tin?
- Do you just have system / operational issues or glitches that need improving?
Because our teams of developers and engineers have such a diverse range of specialist skills there really aren’t many problems / issues we can’t solve.
As a result our clients often come to us with additional specific problems that need a solution, an improvement or even a complete re-think.
Swiss Post did just that - and we created MBagger
MBagger
An intelligent, rapid, scan-to-print system that automatically cleans up text, whatever the quality of the source image or lighting conditions.
- Rapidly scans and prints labels
- Consistently produces clear, readable, duplicate labels
- Automatically enhances difficult to read text
- Stand alone system
- No training required
- Supplied complete and ready to operate
- Free trial available
About MBagger
The duplication of an address label, or just a label, is a common task in remailing and many other processes.
This task is often performed by manually copying the label, which is time consuming and prone to errors.
Unhappy with existing solutions yet seeing a clear need in the industry for a rapid scan to print label duplicator that actually works, Swiss Post (one of Pinesoft’s clients) asked if the development team could come up with an innovative prototype as an alternative to existing ineffective devices.
The remit: To create a solution to rapidly scan, clean up and print even the most poorly printed or hand written address labels (such as impact printers with old ribbons, coloured backgrounds, low-contrast images, bad or faint handwriting) and do so under all realistically possible lighting conditions to counter uneven illumination in the warehouse.
The team investigated all aspects of thresholding and after much experimentation developed an impressive, configurable way to let the software actively seek out and clean up text in the source image and produce a text only, clearly readable facsimile.
MBagger was born
Now available off the shelf, MBagger is a label duplication system that consistently produces clearly readable facsimile labels regardless of the quality of the scanned image or the environment in which the labels are to be duplicated.
The MBagger software actively seeks and cleans up text in the source image. This results in a considerable enhancement in readability of the output label and a substantial improvement in productivity; every scan leads to a readable output.
In addition to the significant advantage of speeding up processes, MBagger also eradicates spelling or copying errors.
Some Examples
The illustration (below) shows examples of various types of address label of the sort that are difficult to duplicate cleanly - (ORIGINAL).
We then show how these labels would appear on a label printer using simple thresholding techniques
(SIMPLE THRESHOLDING)
The third column shows examples of labels after being processed by MBagger (MBAGGER OUTPUT).
To see MBagger in action call us on +44 (0)20 7353 6161 or
>> Arrange free trial or request more information
>> Watch the video demonstration (coming soon)
>> Case study