Innovative ways to use FileMaker
Ever wondered what else you can do with FileMaker? We found a couple of innovative ways.
OCR for hostile environments
Our client had a problem; How do you track assets and plant in a hostile or outdoor environment such as a desert, a jungle or at sea? This can be very difficult with the weather and other environmental factors often working against you. Labels or stickers will not last, getting damaged, falling off or fading due to exposure to the weather.
Our customer, who tests and repairs pipelines and other petrochemical infrastructure, had just this problem. They resorted to writing relevant information on the assets in indelible ink and recording the information manually later, from a photograph of the writing. This approach worked but was liable to errors, particularly from duplicated record entry every time the asset was moved for repair or stock control. Similarly, if the asset was in repair, details had to be entered at every stage of the process and items could be lost and the process delayed.
After reviewing their processes and requirements, we found a better and innovative way to use their FileMaker system. We developed an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) application which could read the handwritten notes from the photograph even off curved surfaces such as a pipe. (Typically, a very difficult thing to do).
By being able to read this information directly off the pipe by a photograph, not only reduces the processing time for repairs, but errors were also reduced, and they know exactly where every asset is at any time, and what needs to be done for every repair.
By using Amazon Web Services AI capabilities, the solution easily recognises the handwritten information and interfaces with the processing system throughout the whole process, reducing time and cost.
Another client needed a similar solution to extract certain information from an uploaded pdf, however due to company policy requirements, this information needed to stay in house and could not be uploaded to Amazon. So we developed another solution which split the pdf into images, one per page and then using the OCR solution, all of the images were ‘read’ before extracting and checking for the required information. All this achieved running only on the FileMaker server.
Workforce time tracking.
One of the more traditional aspects of working in a labour-intensive environment, such as a manufacturing or logistics plant, is staff clocking on and off shift. Our client, a fabrics manufacturer was looking for a new solution to replace the manual entry system currently in use and turned to us for suggestions. As they were already a FileMaker user, we developed a facial recognition capability for them which matches a user’s image. Photos are taken using an iPad and compared with their image held in the system, and they are logged onto / off shift accordingly. The new approach accurately records the times automatically and is faster and cheaper than the old manual system. The facial recognition also prevents errors, such as using the wrong card or incorrect password entry, or dare I say it, fraudulent actions such as logging in colleagues who may be late or absent. An additional benefit of this approach is that all information is immediately linked to the payroll system and can be automatically processed, reducing time and admin.
This system is currently undergoing user acceptance testing and is helping the client to identify new possibilities and areas for improvement.