ME40321 - Paul Wallace - The Use of QR Codes For Document Management in Safety-Critical Industries

ME40321: PROJECT REPORT
THE USE OF QR CODES FOR DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT IN SAFETY-CRITICAL INDUSTRIES

Paul Wallace
19/04/2011
Supervisor: Co-Supervisor:
Stephen Culley Hamish McAlpine
Department of Mechanical Engineering FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND DESIGN
FINAL YEAR MEng PROJECT REPORT
The Use of QR Codes for Document Management in Safety-critical Industries Paul Wallace 19/04/2011
I certify that I have read and understood the entry in the Student Handbook for the Department of Mechanical Engineering on Cheating and Plagiarism and that all material in this assignment is my own work, except where I have indicated with appropriate references. I agree that, in line with Regulation 15.3(e), if requested I will submit an electronic copy of this work for submission to a Plagiarism Detection Service for quality assurance purposes.
Authors signature: . Supervisor: Prof. S.J. Culley Assessor: Dr. H.C. McAlpine
The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-Critical Industries

Report Document Contextual Information (Metadata) Static QR Code, which contains the restricted document metadata set of: Description, Master Author, Creation Date, Title, Subject, Classification/Type, Language, Format and Publisher.
Report Document Status Information Dynamic QR Code, which displays information on document version, approval status and historic editing events. Report Document Storage Information Dynamic QR Code, which displays information on document location, access rights, and archiving.
Report Document Reference Information Dynamic QR Code, which displays information on references contained within the report.
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SUMMARY
Whilst systems for the management of electronic documents are commonplace in industry, their integration with existing paper document management is often overlooked. This can lead to many issues such as the loss of design rationale during annotation; the use of documents which have been superseded since printing; and the inability to verify the context of a printed resource. This project considers the application of Quick Response barcodes to rapidly and reliably bridge the gap between a static paper document and these dynamic electronic systems. A set of concepts for revising existing document management processes are produced following a review of popular document management software packages; interviews of current engineers; and an analysis of the literature concerning the cause of failures. The most promising areas for the application of barcodes suggested include the storage of and access to metadata, version control and referencing. The methods for applying barcodes to these concepts are investigated through a period of self-testing and reflection; structured testing of the barcodes and associated display and scanning technologies; and a questionnaire concerning information importance and useful features. The primary factors affecting barcode display size were found to be the resolution of monitors and their production on inkjet printers. A set of guidelines are generated regarding the minimum barcode size for reliable implementation with various hardware. A final system for the management of an engineering report is then proposed, along with an example systems architecture and interface, which are applied to this report document. A method which can be adopted by industry for the deployment of a barcode-enabled document management system is then suggested, with a set of supporting recommendations.
To read the barcodes throughout this report, an app for Smartphones can be downloaded for free from: http://www.i-nigma.mobi
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CONTENTS
1 Introduction ......................................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 Issues with Document Management ................................................................................................ 1 Barcodes and Associated Technology ............................................................................................. 2 Aims and Objectives ................................................................................................................................ 3 Project Outline........................................................................................................................................... 3 Report Contents and Structure........................................................................................................... 5 Summary of Literature Review................................................................................................. 5 Summary of Technology Review.............................................................................................. 5 Summary of Application Definition and Investigation.................................................... 5 Summary of Application Method Development................................................................. 5 Summary of Overall Results and Integrated Approach Proposal ............................... 5 Summary of Conclusions ............................................................................................................. 6
1.5.1 1.5.2 1.5.3 1.5.4 1.5.5 1.5.6 2
Literature Review .............................................................................................................................................. 7 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Document Management in Engineering ......................................................................................... 7 Document Management Software ..................................................................................................... 7 Metadata ...................................................................................................................................................... 9 Software Design ........................................................................................................................................ 9
Technology Review ........................................................................................................................................ 11 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 Databases ................................................................................................................................................. 11 PDA and Smartphones ........................................................................................................................ 11 Alternative Technologies to Barcodes.......................................................................................... 12 Barcodes and Interpretation ............................................................................................................ 13 Quick Response (QR) Barcodes ....................................................................................................... 15
Investigation and Definition of Potential Barcode Applications ................................................. 17 4.1 Targeted Review of Literature and Failure Cases ................................................................... 17 Overview ......................................................................................................................................... 18
4.1.1 4.2
Document Management Software Package Analysis.............................................................. 18
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The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-Critical Industries 4.2.1 4.2.2 4.2.3 4.3 Goals and Methodology............................................................................................................. 18 Results .............................................................................................................................................. 19 Overview ......................................................................................................................................... 21
Engineer Interviews............................................................................................................................. 21 Goals and Methodology............................................................................................................. 21 Results and Discussion .............................................................................................................. 24 Overview ......................................................................................................................................... 27
4.3.1 4.3.2 4.3.3 4.4
Potential Barcode Application Concepts ..................................................................................... 28 Concept 1 - Review Annotation Capture............................................................................ 29 Concept 2 - Existence and Archiving ................................................................................... 30 Concept 3 - Print Tracking ....................................................................................................... 31 Concept 4 - Dynamic Reference Storage ............................................................................ 32 Concept 5 - Version Verification............................................................................................ 33 Concept 6 - Process Control and Feedback....................................................................... 34 Concept 7 - Metadata Access .................................................................................................. 35
4.4.1 4.4.2 4.4.3 4.4.4 4.4.5 4.4.6 4.4.7 5
Development of Methods for Applying Barcodes .............................................................................. 36 5.1 Self-Testing of Concepts ..................................................................................................................... 36 Goals and Methodology............................................................................................................. 36 Results and Discussion .............................................................................................................. 40 Overview ......................................................................................................................................... 44
5.1.1 5.1.2 5.1.3 5.2
Barcode Function Testing .................................................................................................................. 45 Goals and Methodology............................................................................................................. 45 Results and Discussion .............................................................................................................. 50 Overview ......................................................................................................................................... 54
5.2.1 5.2.2 5.2.3 5.3
Information Importance and Usefulness Questionnaire ...................................................... 55 Goals and Methodology............................................................................................................. 56 Results and Discussion .............................................................................................................. 59 Overview ......................................................................................................................................... 61
5.3.1 5.3.2 5.3.3 6
Overall Results and Integrated Approach Proposal ......................................................................... 63
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The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-Critical Industries 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 7 Proposed System Components ........................................................................................................ 63 Proposed Systems Architecture ...................................................................................................... 64 Proposed Interface Design ................................................................................................................ 71 Proposed Deployment Method........................................................................................................ 74
Conclusions ....................................................................................................................................................... 75 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 Motivation For Project ........................................................................................................................ 75 Aims and Objectives ............................................................................................................................. 75 Methods and Main Findings.............................................................................................................. 76 Recommendations To Industry ....................................................................................................... 78
8 9 10 11
Further Work.................................................................................................................................................... 80 Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................................ 81 References..................................................................................................................................................... 82 Appendices ................................................................................................................................................... 87
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1 INTRODUCTION
An article in Business Week in 1975 entitled The Office of the Future suggested that there would be a massive drive towards a paperless office within the coming years (anon, 1975). Yet over three decades on and despite the advances in computing such as e-mail and word processing along with the legal acceptance of digital signatures (BERR, 2002), paper consumption in Europe has grown by 2.9% per annum over the last fifteen years (Confederation of European Paper Industries, 2010). Alternative technologies which replicate and enhance the affordances of paper are emerging (Heikenfeld et al., 2011), but the Hype Cycle from Gartner, a research specialist in various technologies, predicts that they will not be in mainstream adoption for between two and five years (King, 2010). It is therefore necessary to accept the future role of paper in engineering, and consider technologies and processes to bridge the gap between the printed physical world and the rapidly-changing virtual world, i.e. we should work towards a future in which paper and electronic document tools work in concert and organizational processes make optimal use of both (Sellen and Harper, 2003).
1.1 ISSUES WITH DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT

The most significant problem with paper documents is that they are a static record. This often manifests itself through the invalidation of references when files are moved. A typical strategy to deal with this is the use of a Document Management System (DMS), where processes or technologies are employed to manage both paper and electronic documents. Despite these systems, and often as a result of them, around 30% of engineers time is spent accessing information. (Lowe et al.) By linking paper documents to electronic systems, their use can be enhanced with the beneficial characteristics and functions available only to electronic documents, such as: the storage of large amounts of information; widespread and remote access; fast, exhaustive searching; flexible, systematic viewing and sorting; quick links to related materials; and dynamically updating or modifying content. A robust document management system is crucial within safety-critical industries, where the failure of such systems can lead to injury or death (McGettrick et al., 2000). These industries include, but are not limited to, the automotive, aeronautical, medical, petrochemical, construction, nuclear and military sectors. By increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of the paper or digital system, engineers will be able to focus on the safety-critical tasks.
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The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-Critical Industries One of the difficulties faced in proposing a solution is the varying levels of technology-driven and process-driven document management adopted by engineering companies (Wiggins, 2000). A strategy is therefore required for which the technology exists and can be rapidly applied.
1.2 BARCODES AND ASSOCIATED TECHNOLOGY

Barcodes already have widespread adoption in the retail, manufacturing and logistics industries as a means of linking printed labels to an electronic management system. They are typically used for identification and tracking of stock, materials and manufacturing processes (Sabric et al., 2007). The most significant benefit of barcodes is that they enable keyless data entry to a system. This reduces the chance of user input error from 1 in 300 for human input to 1 in 15,000 for barcodes (Becta, 2009). Their application to document management has been considered through their use as a digital watermark and as a barcode-DMS interface (Hirakawa and Lijima, 2009; Han et al., 2005; Hoke, 2005; Baum, 2005), however this work does not include detailed guidelines for their application. Hoke suggests that the effective implementation of barcodes to document management practices can significantly improve the efficiency of organizations and the profitability of businesses. A recent example of their use is the electronic capture of paper documents in the UK Government Census. Barcodes were printed to the feedback forms at a rate of 130 per second (Office for National Statistics, 2010) and were used to automate the capture and organisation of the collected data.
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1.3 AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

The aim of the project is to investigate the potential role of barcodes for the management and augmentation of printed and electronic documents. The main objectives to achieve this are: 1. Explore the technologies and current methods used for barcodes and document management. 2. Produce a set of concepts for enhancing the current practices through the application of barcodes. 3. Prove and develop the concepts. 4. Create a systems architecture and interface for the revised methods of document management. 5. Analyse the findings and produce a set of recommendations for applying the process in industry.
1.4 PROJECT OUTLINE

A flowchart for the project outline is presented in Figure 1.
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Paul Wallace
Inputs
Processes
Outputs
Preliminary project investigation
Appendix I Group analysis and discussion
Barcode applications brainstorm
Section 2/3
Literature and technology review
WHAT Aims and objectives
Section 1.3
-4Section 4.3 Engineer interviews Section 4.1 Failure cases in literature Section 4.2 Document management software package analysis Proposed application concepts Section 4.4
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Section 5.1.1 Self-testing and reflection Section 5.1.2 Barcode technology appraisal Section 5.1.3 Engineer and academic questionnaire
Individual analysis and discussion
WHY Current practices and issues
Section 4
Barcode implementation guidelines
Appendix H
Metadata importance guidelines
Section 5.3.3
F IGURE 1 F LOWCHART REPRESENTIN G PROJECT PROGRESSIO N

WHAT, WHY and HOW
HOW Technology and data application
Section 5
Proposed systems architecture
Section 6.2
Proposed interface designs
Section 6.3
Summary and development
Proposed deployment method
Section 6.4
CONCLUSIONS Use of barcodes for document management in industry
Section 7
Further work
Section 8
1.5 REPORT CONTENTS AND STRUCTURE

The contents and structure of each section will now be summarised.
1.5.1 SUMMARY OF LITERATURE REVIEW

This section describes the pertinent research activity and literature relevant to this project so as to justify the project undertaking and highlight the contribution which the project will make. Topics reviewed are: document management in engineering; document management software; metadata and software design.
1.5.2 SUMMARY OF TECHNOLOGY REVIEW

This section reviews the state of the art for the technologies considered in this report. It summarises the technologies into essential information to provide a justification for the selection and application throughout the project. Technologies reviewed are: databases; PDAs and smartphones; alternative technologies; barcodes and interpretation; and Quick Response barcodes.
1.5.3 SUMMARY OF APPLICATION DEFINITION AND INVESTIGATION

This section investigates the underlying reasons for why improvements should be made to existing document management practices. This is achieved through the review of popular document management software packages; interviews of engineering professionals; and an analysis of the literature concerning document management software and failures. A set of application concepts are then generated.
1.5.4 SUMMARY OF APPLICATION METHOD DEVELOPMENT

This section considers methods for applying the proposed concepts, and explores the issues associated with these through: a self-testing implementation of the concepts; structured barcode and associated scanning and display technology testing; and the creation and analysis of a questionnaire concerning the importance and usefulness of information.
1.5.5 SUMMARY OF OVERALL RESULTS AND INTEGRATED APPROACH PROPOSAL

This section develops these concepts into a final set of system components, discusses their application to this report document and suggests how they can be applied by providing an Paul Wallace -519th April 2011
The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-Critical Industries example systems architecture and interface design. It then demonstrates a deployment process which describes how the methods used for generating this system can be implemented.
1.5.6 SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS

This section presents the motivation for the project and restates the aims and objectives. It then discusses the methods used and main findings for each of the aims and objectives. A set of recommendations to industry are then made.
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2 LITERATURE REVIEW
Through studying a variety of sources on the subject of document management, it is clear that there is a great deal of activity in this area, including a number of projects which endeavour to standardise and improve upon existing practices. This section extracts and describes the pertinent research in the following topics: document management in engineering; document management software; metadata and software design.
2.1 DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT IN ENGINEERING

In business, the importance of a manageable and auditable paper trail is highly important for legal and regulatory compliance; for example it is highly desirable in industry to meet quality and data security standards such as ISO 9001: 2008 (Quality Management Systems) and ISO 27001:2005 (Information Security). It is also very important for businesses to create and sustain competitive advantage and effective and efficient retrieval facilities [are] an important factor affecting worker productivity (Zantout and Marir, 1999). Therefore, it is important to understand how engineers use and organise information (Lowe et al.). The interest in this area is not just from academics, but those in industry wishing to apply the suggestions from this work. The ability to re-use information is also the target of much research. The Knowledge and Information Management Grand Challenge Project is a three year, 5m programme of which the primary output is the development of a set of guiding Principles of Engineering Information Management (McMahon et al., 2009). Preserving information enables the use of knowledge discovery software which can aid decisions and improve processes (Zieger and Lloyd, 2001).
2.2 DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE

There are a number of available software packages for the management of information, many of which can be described by generic marketing terms shown in Table 1. These categories will often overlap or be a part of an integrated system. All of these software packages store the information in some form of computerised database, and could therefore be classified as records management applications with increased functionality (Wiggins, 2000). When discussing the relationship between paper-based and digitally-stored aircraft management software, Romanski (2003) stresses the importance that traceability to all artefacts [is] established during the certification of safety critical software. This is ultimately Paul Wallace -719th April 2011
The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-Critical Industries the goal of a well-structured management system. Work has also been carried out into webbased document management systems (Balasubramaniuan and Bashian, 1998), which is of particular significance as there is widespread interest in the idea of distributed systems known as cloud computing.
T ABLE 1 - C ATEGORIES OF ENTERPRISE SOFTWARE PACKAGES
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) allows the integration of management information both internally and externally across an entire organisation. Supply Chain Management (SCM) allows the management of a business network providing products and services.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) allows the management of the interaction with clients, customers and sales prospects.
Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) allows information management, typically for engineering companies, during the conception, design, manufacture, service and disposal of a product.
The benefits of digital document management systems described by Sellen and Harper (2003) include: Storing large amounts of information in a small space Widespread and remote access to information stores Fast, exhaustive searching of information stores Flexible, systematic viewing and sorting Quick links to related materials Dynamically updating or modifying content Support for different kinds of documents Controlling access until information is ready Consistent indexing of files Portability, joint viewing and markup Quick access to files
The foremost features of document management systems suggested by Wiggins (2000) are compared to assertions by Sprague (1995) and the recommendations of the Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM, 2010) in Table 2.
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T ABLE 2 P RIMARY FEATURES OF D OCUMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
Wiggins Operational use Work flow Indexing Revision and version control Operational needs Information content Individual items
Sprague Status reporting Access control Version control Retention management Disaster recovery
AIIM Check In / Check Out and Locking Version Control Roll back Audit Trail Annotation and Stamps Summarisation Storage location Security and access control
2.3 METADATA
According to the National Information Standards Organisation (NISO) Metadata is structured information that describes, explains, locates, or otherwise makes it easier to retrieve, use, or manage an information resource (NISO, 2004). This description suggests that metadata is a supplementary entity, however a great deal of literature takes a more stern opinion on its use. Darlington et al. (2008) argue that metadata is used to place a document, or object, into some recognisable individuating context, and only then can it be identified as an information object. It seems obvious then that anybody creating a document should include metadata, however Bangay (2010) suggests that it is usually incomplete or contradicts the nature of the document. A number of large research projects focus on the importance of metadata structure, for example the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI, 2010) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST, 2010) guidelines, which contribute a schema for application to metadata storage. Many of these schemata can be adapted to suit company requirements. Metadata is of particular importance in document archiving and retrieval, which is the focus of the PREMIS Data Dictionary for Metadata Preservation project (PREMIS, 2005).
2.4 SOFTWARE DESIGN

With the design of any system, a systematic approach is required. According to Hong (2005), the design of a software system should contain at least five basic elements:
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The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-Critical Industries 1. the objectives of the design, 2. a description of the designed product, 3. the rationale of the design, 4. a plan of the production, and finally, 5. the designated usage of the product. A common way of representing this design process is the use of a set of notation described as software or systems architecture, which involves the description of elements from which systems are built, interactions among those elements, patterns that guide their composition, and constraints on these patterns. (Shaw and Garlan, 1996) There are many approaches to systems architecture modelling, however a traditional distinction regarding modelling perspectives is between the structural, functional and behavioural perspective of the system (Krogstie, 2007). To allow this, some authors suggest the simplification of a system by considering it from various viewpoints (Shaw and Garlan, 1993), such as the The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF, 2009) and the Reference Model of Open Distributed Processing (ISO/IEC 10746-3: 1996). To create these diagrams a standard modelling language should be used (Hong, 2005). The Integrated DEFinition language (IDEF) is a long-established method used in engineering system design and has been adapted for software systems architecture, however the Universal Modelling Language (UML) is broadly accepted as the software industry standard for this (Kim et al.).
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3 TECHNOLOGY REVIEW
This section reviews the state of the art for the technologies considered in this report. It summarises the technologies into essential information to provide a justification for their selection and application throughout the project. Technologies described are: databases; PDAs and smartphones; alternative barcode technologies; barcode types and interpretation; and Quick Response barcodes.
3.1 DATABASES
A database is a digital organisation of text, images and statistics. It is possible to interact with a database using computer software known as a DataBase Management System (DBMS). These provide access, storage, security and backup facilities to provide a convenient and efficient method of utilising the data (Rob et al., 2008). A relational database stores information logically rather than physically and so a query language is used to provide an interface for storing and retrieving information from it. Commonly used database management systems include MySQL, Filemaker, Microsoft Access and Oracle (Rob et al., 2008).
3.2 PDA AND SMARTPHONES

A Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) is a mobile electronic device for information management and display. A smartphone is an application of this with the functions of a mobile phone incorporated. Due to this subtle difference, throughout the report the terms PDA and smartphone will be used interchangeably. Recently there has been exponential growth in the adoption of PDAs and currently they make up 28% of the UK and US mobile phone market (Nielsen, 2010). Common features of PDAs include: Network and internet access and the internet via wireless WAN or Wi-Fi Web-browsing capabilities Touch-screen technology Built-in digital camera Up to 1Ghz processor speed and 500MB RAM
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The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-Critical Industries By creating a software application (or app) the hardware can be utilised to perform a wide variety of functions. Freely-available apps can be easily downloaded for reading the information contained within the barcodes used throughout this report, such as i-Nigma.
http://www.i-nigma.com
A portable handheld device which can interact with centrally-stored or online resources has a wealth of potential applications. Smartphones have been used in medical professions for accessing drug databases (Groote and Doranski, 2004), for improving educational practices (Wishart et al., 2007) and for aiding people with disabilities (Tekin and Coughlan, 2010). Their use for document management has not been extensively researched.
3.3 ALTERNATIVE TECHNOLOGIES TO BARCODES

One area of notable research is in the application of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags to industry. An RFID tag contains a transponder, which emits encoded information when passed within the interrogation zone of a receiver. The ability to store high volumes of data has facilitated their application in the tracking of automotive assembly lines, pharmaceutical distribution, and publishing and library book loans (Hamano, 2010). The shortfall of RFID tags is that the receivers are not currently installed in a mass-market products such as PDAs, however progression is being made towards their integration in Japan and the UK (Hori and Matsumoto, 2004). Although the cost of RFID tag production is low, barcodes can be printed or displayed for free. Barcodes can also be read from monitors and paper, which RFID tags cannot. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is a technique used for converting printed text and handwriting into a machine-readable text format. It is widely used in the electronic conversion of books, however even from an excellent quality original studies have shown only 99% accuracy for printed text (Feng and Manmatha, 2010; Holley, 2009) and 90% accuracy for handwritten text (Burd, 2011). The benefit of barcodes over OCR is that a greater quantity of information can be displayed in the same area as printed text with superior reliability. An alternative approach to linking printed documents to electronic resources is to remove the paper resources altogether. Current portable document e-readers such as the Kindle (Amazon, 2011) allow the display of books and documents in electronic format, but these
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The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-Critical Industries technologies do not yet feature the interactive affordances of paper, such as being thin, light and flexible (Sellen and Harper, 2003). There is a great deal of research into alternative epaper, which is flexible and can display moving images in full colour, but these technologies will not be in mainstream use for many years (Heikenfeld et al., 2011).
3.4 BARCODES AND INTERPRETATION

A barcode converts information into an image with areas of high and low reflective property which can be read using an optical scanner. The original information can be retrieved using software algorithms. A number of different barcode types exist, each with their own encryption algorithms, the most prevalent of these are demonstrated in Table 3. The datamatrix barcode type has seen extensive use in industry, for example the labelling of the UK Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) paper driving licenses (Dept. for Transport, 2010). The main limitation of barcodes is the requirement for a line-of-sight in reading and the environmental variability in their application. The justification for the exploration of QR barcodes in this project are that they have: over twice the storage capacity of all other barcodes, superior error checking capabilities within the encryption algorithms, a small printout size relative to their content, a high speed scanning and interpretation process.
Specific barcode scanners are available and in widespread use in industry. An example of this is the Honeywell MS7580 Genesis shown in Figure 2. This particular model can read multiple barcode types and input the embedded information to a PC via a USB connection.
Image taken from http://www.honeywell.com

F IGURE 2 H ONEYWELL MS7580 G ENESIS SPECIFIC BARCODE SCANNER
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T ABLE 3 C OMPARISON OF BARCODE
TYPES
Example
Summarised from Anon, 2011 Maximum Name Developer Storage Capacity Universal Product Code UPC-A barcode 12 characters (numeric)
Uses Library book referencing Retail industry point-of-sale. DVLA driver data Parcel Delivery tracking Pharmaceutical Industry labelling Space Shuttle part numbering Healthcare and Pharmaceutical Industry labelling
Data Matrix
RVSI Acuity CiMatrix
2,335 characters (alphanumeric)
Aztec Code
Honeywell
High Capacity Colour Barcode
Microsoft
Quick Response (QR) Code
Denso Wave
4,296 characters (alphanumeric) or 7,089 characters (numeric)
Google adverts University of Bath coursework submission
MaxiCode
UPS
93 characters (alphanumeric)
UPS Parcel Delivery Tracking
Shotcode
High Energy Magic (Cambridge University)
49 characters
Online marketing
CodaBlock
Symbol Technologies
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3.5 QUICK RESPONSE (QR) BARCODES

Information which is required for the interpretation of this report is extracted from the Denso Wave website (Denso Wave, 2011) and summarised now. The QR barcode was developed by Denso Wave in 1994. The use of QR barcode is free of any license as the patent rights are not exercised. It is clearly defined and published as a Japanese Industrial Standards (JIS X 0510) and ISO international standard (ISO/IEC18004). It features an Error Correction Capability (ECC) for dirt and damage in four categories L (7%), M(15%), Q(25%) and H(30%) . It can be read from any angle. A Secure QR (SQR) format exists with data encryption capabilities. Data can be encoded in numeric, alphanumeric, binary and kanji formats.
The physical features of the barcode are now described and supplemented by Figure 3.
Image taken from http://www.keyence.com

F IGURE 3 QR BARCODE FEATURES
A module is a single data cell which has a binary representation. A white margin equivalent to 4 modules is required around the barcode. There are 40 versions which indicates the number of modules on each side. This ranges from Version 1 (21 21 modules) up to Version 40 (177 177 modules). The timing and position detection patterns are used to determine the barcode orientation for scanning. The alignment pattern is used to stitch together multiple barcodes for high storage capacity. The format information signifies the error correction rate used.
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The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-Critical Industries There are a many free scripts written in various programming languages for encoding information in a QR Code. A comprehensive barcode generation utility is available from:
http://keremerkan.net/qr-code-and-2d-code-generator/
A free PHP script for generating and modifying PDF files is available from:
http://www.fpdf.org/
Throughout the rest of the report it can be assumed that barcode refers to a QR Code.
Note: During the progression of the project, a new version of the QR barcode has been released, iQR, with specific application for the automotive and aeronautical industries. Compared to QR barcodes, it features 80% higher data capacity, is 30% smaller and has up to 50% error correction. It also offers the arrangement of the modules in a rectangular matrix format (Smolski, 2011).
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4 INVESTIGATION AND DEFINITION OF POTENTIAL BARCODE APPLICATIONS

This section investigates how improvements should be made to existing document management practices and the underlying reasons for doing so. This is achieved through the review of popular document management software packages, interviews of current engineers and an analysis of the literature concerning document management software and failures. A set of application concepts are then generated.
4.1 TARGETED REVIEW OF LITERATURE AND FAILURE CASES

This section considers cases in the literature which may be useful in determining the rationale behind effective document management systems. The literature which was considered is shown in Table 4 and the full discussion is available in Appendix A.
T ABLE 4 D ETAILS OF TARGETED LITERATURE
Identifier Literature 1 Literature 2 Literature 3 Literature 4 Literature 5 Literature 6 Literature 7 Literature 8 Literature 9
Author Fisher and Kingma, 2001 Goulielmos and Tzannatos, 1997 Zieger, 2001
Work Review of failure cases Review of accident statistics Review of an existing knowledge management system and document management system
Industry Aeronautical and Aerospace Shipping
Aeronautical
Parnas, 2009 Kajko-Mattsson, 2005 Scott and OMalley, 2002 Keraron, 2009 AIIM, 2009 Hales, 2011
Review of system development practice Review of software documentation Review of standards Study of annotation use and storage Guidelines Failure Case Investigation
Software Engineering Railway, Aeronautical and Automotive Safety lifecycle management Aeronautical and Gas Information Management Systems Steel Manufacture
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4.1.1 OVERVIEW
After reviewing the literature described in Table 4, a number of general observations will now be made. To create a useful document management system it is important to consider not just the information which is stored, but the way in which it can be displayed to the user. Three factors drive the design and implementation of a document management system: Information overload, display of data and timeliness. It is useful to store and share knowledge and, in particular, design rationale. There is a high importance of clear linking of documents and in particular access to documentation which is reliable, i.e. up-to-date and comprehensive. It is important to maintain a manageable and auditable paper trail. Indexing is crucial to the management of documents. Concise text should be used for accuracy in data-based decisions, whereas graphics should be used for a fast response time in process-based decisions. Current standards on data control (IEC 61508) and safety lifecycle requirements (ANSI/ISA S84.01) are not detailed enough concerning the design of management systems and user interaction with them.
4.2 DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE PACKAGE ANALYSIS

This section will focus on the methods for document management within a selection of software packages used in industry.
4.2.1 GOALS AND METHODOLOGY

The primary goal of this research is to explore the functions of a selection of document management software packages and extract the salient features and methods which they use to achieve these. The focus of this project is engineering-specific documentation, and since PLM software is the most appropriate for this it will be expanded further. The four most popular PLM software packages were selected for review. No access to the programs will be used other than the published data from the developers website. In addition to the generic PLM software, two specific document management software packages were also selected and investigated. The six software packages are shown in Table 5. The primary considerations of the review are document storage and access, and metadata support. Paul Wallace -1819th April 2011

T ABLE 5 D ETAILS OF SOFTWARE P ACKAGES
Developer PTC
Software Windchill
Software Category Further Information
Siemens
Teamcenter
Dassault Systmes Enovia
PLM
Open Source
Aras PLM
SAP
PLM
Open Source
Leto DMS Specific DMS
Open Source
OpenDocMan
4.2.2 RESULTS
A summary of the findings is presented in Table 6.
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T ABLE 6 S UMMARISED COMPARISON
OF SOFTWARE PACKAGES
Developer
Software
Client Focus Mediumlarge
Common Features for Document Management
Access Control
Storage of Documents
Metadata Support
Database Support Oracle, Microsoft SQL
PTC
Windchill
Homepage providing dashboard analytics Automated report generation of document activity Modular and configurable user interface Workflow control of engineering changes Interface and parts driven by Bill of Materials (BOM) structure Specific modules for Computer Aided Design (CAD) components, assemblies and drawings and Electronic Design Automation (EDA) integration Comprehensive user management and access restriction with differentiation between departments, projects, and employment roles. Files are automatically renamed with a unique identifier. Versions stored and organised within a server database. Many software-specific metadata elements.
Server 2005
Siemens
Teamcenter
Mediumlarge
Oracle Database 11g, Microsoft SQL Server 2008
Dassault Systmes
Enovia
Mediumlarge
IBM DB2 Universal Any additional custom metadata fields can be applied to file records. Microsoft SQL Server 2008 IBM DB2 Universal Database, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Database, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server 2008
Open Source
Aras PLM
Smallmedium
Management of project progression through stagegate or phase-gate analysis Quality compliance for document storage and access. Part Production Approval Process (PPAP)
SAP
PLM
Mediumlarge Smallmedium
PHP-driven with web-based interface Interface and parts driven by folder structure Quality compliance for document storage and access. Files listed through tables of contents, indexes Full-text searches and sort features Expiration date for documents Online editing of files Multiples file types supported but no linking to CAD programs Check in/out and lockdown Basic document change tracking through user comment and storage of previous versions User management and access restriction with three user security levels: Admin, Manager and User. Files are automatically renamed with a unique identifier. Versions stored and organised within a server folder structure Many software-specific metadata elements. Additional custom metadata fields are not supported. MySQL (compatibility through ADOdb)
Open Source
Leto DMS
Open Source
OpenDocMan
Smallmedium
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4.2.3 OVERVIEW
A set of overall observations can be made about software packages for document management: Documents are renamed or appended with a unique identifier. The original filenames are stored. Documents are stored in a database for large systems and in a traditional folder structure for smaller systems. All metadata is stored in a database so that it can be queried. Collaborative working for specific document management software is restricted to review and approval processes. None of the software packages have paper document management routines.
4.3 ENGINEER INTERVIEWS

This section describes a method and results for analysing the document management procedures of engineering companies for both electronic and printed documents. It attempts to determine the actual methods used in industry and highlight potential breaks in the process. A review of document management practices within large enterprise systems has been undertaken in the Document Management Software review, however the findings are only applicable to model companies. An engineering company must often adapt their established working methods to fulfil the unique requirements of a particular project i.e. some of the software features will be used extensively, modified to suit the purpose, or disregarded in place of a manual system. There will also be a level of parallelism in use of the electronic system and manual procedures, the interaction of which cannot be determined without internal knowledge of the company. An information-gathering exercise is therefore required to gain insight into the document management methods employed in industry.

The short project timescale would not permit an observational study and so an interviewbased study was used. This is an exercise for directing the project work rather than to gather evidence to support a predetermined hypothesis, and so the focus will be on the opinions of Paul Wallace -2119th April 2011
The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-Critical Industries the interviewees. For this, Bryman (1989) suggests a qualitative research method as the emphasis in qualitative research tends to be on individuals interpretations of their environments and of their own and others behaviour. As there is likely to be variation in the company practices, a strictly structured interview process will not be possible. The research strategy will therefore be a descriptive study of existing practices via a semi-structured interview. Research Question: How do engineers currently use and manage both electronic and printed documents and resources, and integrate them with existing management software systems?
There are three main processes involved in this research strategy: 1. Define research objectives and create interview questionnaire. 2. Select and interview company representatives. 3. Data analysis. By setting research objectives, the ideas contained with the research statement can be put into a documentable form. Three research objectives are common to all topics: current practice, common issues and suggested improvements. The specific research objectives are listed in Table 7 and were based upon the analysis of document management software and the initial project group brainstorming exercise. Having considered the information requirements, the way in which these will be obtained must then be determined. The use of a scenario-based interviews can evoke task-oriented reflection in design work; they make human activity the starting point and the standard for design work. (Carroll, 2000). This will be using a list of prompting questions derived from the specific information objectives listed in Table 7 as a prompt for the interviewees to interpret and relate to their own experiences at their company. Semi-structured interviews often use open-ended questions to enable discussion around the key investigatory areas, and are widely used in flexible designs, either as the sole method or in combination with others (Robson). These allow the interviewee to convey their opinion on the topics and include related examples and information, whilst maintaining the guidance of the interviewer for meaningful results. The final interview strategy can be created by combining these questions with the diagrammatic framework of the scenario-based interview and is available in Appendix B.
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T ABLE 7 S PECIFIC RESEARCH OBJ ECTIVES FOR ENGINEER INTERVIEWS
Topic Messages and announcements
Specific Information Objective Electronic or paper format Confirmation processes Feedback processes File system structure Revision security Document verification Document release File system structure Hardware/software interfacing Document/resource metadata Referencing Document/resource availability Review process Access security Document duplication and redundancy
Version control
Resource linking
Collaborative working Document sharing
T ABLE 8 D ETAILS OF PARTICIPANTS FOR ENGINEER INTERVIEWS
Company ID Company 1 Company 2 Company 3 Company 4
Engineering Sector Defence and security Consumer electrical products Plastics and rubber Aerospace
Type of Product/Service Marine consultancy Design and manufacture of consumer products Design of manufacturing machinery Surface coating services
No. Employees 1300 3000
Interviewee Role Engineering Consultant Design Engineer
200 70 (26000 company group)
Design Engineer Mechanical Engineer
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The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-Critical Industries Ideally, the data sample would be derived from all of the safety-critical sub-categories within the engineering industry outlined in the introduction. However, due to the limited preparation time, this was not possible. Therefore a convenience sampling method of interviewee selection was used (Kane, 1984). This involved any willing participants within an engineering company irrespective of their role. Information on the interviewees and employers is shown in Table 8.
4.3.2 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

To compare the four companies, information has been extracted from the interviews and is summarised in Table 9, below. For further information a summary of the practices of each of the four companies refer to Appendix C. USE OF PAPER Paper is still common and universally used for document review and annotation. The wet ink signature attitude is still prevalent and electronic authorisation through digital signatures is not always trusted. Keeping annotations for future document users is often poorly managed. The extent of paper document storage varies considerably. Some companies try to run paperless where possible, through electronic communication and electronic editing, sharing and access to documents. Out-of-date paper versions are a common issue. This is currently solved in two ways: either only electronic documents are trusted, or alternatively a strictly-controlled, process-driven document management practice is used. In one instance, manual filing processes are used for management and only one paper version can exist. An official released colour stamp is used to verify the documents. This enables the sole paper released document to be trusted fully. A process-driven document management can be attributed to the strict Quality Assurance (QA) procedures required for ISO 9001 compliance. Counter-intuitively, stricter QA involves a reduced level of system automation.
ELECTRONIC SYSTEMS There are varying levels of computerisation and a solely electronic system is not always the most effective solution. The access of features through a single interface increases designer efficiency in finding and accessing information.
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The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-Critical Industries The easy sharing of resources through a fully-integrated electronic system lends itself well to rapid development and collaborative working. Technology-based systems allow the designers to focus on the design tasks instead of the housekeeping. Most established engineering companies take a parallel integrate and evolve approach to development of their systems. Document management practices such as file naming and version control cannot be managed by common sense alone. No correlation can be drawn between the company classification and whether they use a traditional folder structure or database for storing documents or CAD models. A company could have any permutation of the processes and technologies suggested, i.e. every company is unique. Any proposed general solution should be modular as there is no one-size-fits-all solution. RESEARCH METHODS The document management practices discovered through the interviews were not as expected and so gave a very useful insight into the role of paper and electronic systems in four different engineering companies. These observations could be further enhanced by using other research techniques in addition to the semi-structured interview, such as the analysis of the working documents of the companies or a period of operational observation. This would enable the triangulation technique described by Kane (1984) to verify the qualitative interview responses. Typically, unstructured interviews do not provide comparable responses. Although a qualitative research method was used to gain unbiased opinions, the information had to be analysed and categorised by the author. Whilst the intention was to guide the project focus and suggest possible applications, useful insight was gained through the limited sample size available. The method used can be treated as a recommendation to future researchers and for implementation in industry, and with a wider sample size and company base conclusions on the industry in general could be drawn.
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T ABLE 9 S UMMARISED RESULTS OF
ENGINEER INTERVIEWS
Company 1
Company 2 All documents and CAD components Database Database
Company 3 All documents and CAD components Database Folders Technologydriven and Processdriven Medium Low: Review
Company 4 All documents and CAD components Database Database
IM system
Resource library only
Document/report file structure CAD file structure
Folders Folders
IM practices
Processdriven
Technologydriven
Processdriven
Level of automation
Low Medium:
High Low: Review, Archiving
Medium High: Review, Approval, Production, Archiving QA stamp, checking procedures (released documents) Hard-copy and Electronic
Use of paper documents
Review, Approval, Archiving
Control of paper documents
Signed coversheets (released documents) Hard-copy and electronic
None
Instruction on CAD template
Archiving of released documents
Hard-copy and Electronic
Electronic
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4.3.3 OVERVIEW
The intention of the interviews was to find how engineers currently use and manage both electronic and printed documents and integrate them with existing electronic resources. A set of general statements can be made about important considerations in applying barcodes to existing document management practices. The referencing of other documents and resources is a common problem with existing systems. For some companies the use of paper is essential and should be enhanced through electronic interaction, not replaced. Companies with strict quality assurance requirements tend to use a process-driven document management system with less automation. Document storage is a mixture of folders and databases and is independent of company size and industrial sector. Most document management systems have evolved through procedure and technology developments, and companies cannot directly replace their entire system easily. Integrated technology-based systems allow better collaboration and workflow management.
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4.4 POTENTIAL BARCODE APPLICATION CONCEPTS

The findings from the document management software package analysis, engineer interviews and document management literature review have highlighted a number of problems with the current processes. This section presents seven conceptual scenarios with the greatest perceived benefit. Each of these concepts takes an area of an existing process and focuses on the area which is most prone to an electronic system, process, or human error. It then attempts to mitigate the risk of occurrence through the application of barcodes by suggesting an alternative process. The seven concepts are summarised in Table 10.
T ABLE 10 S UMMARY OF BARCODE AP PLICATION CONCEPTS
Concept 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Category Workflow management Storage Storage Referencing Status Feedback Storage
Description Review annotation capture Existence and archiving Print tracking Dynamic reference storage Version verification Process control and feedback Metadata access
Sources Engineer Interviews Literature and failure cases Software Package Analysis Engineer Interviews Engineer Interviews Engineer Interviews Engineer Interviews Literature and failure cases Engineer Interviews Literature and failure cases Software Package Analysis Engineer Interviews
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4.4.1 CONCEPT 1 - REVIEW ANNOTATION CAPTURE

All of the companies interviewed use printed documents for annotation during review. Sometimes this annotated document is not stored electronically and after use the reasons for design changes can be lost Rationale: (Company 3, Literature 7). There is often no method for confirming that all design changes have been carried out (Company 3). The manual involvement in the scanning and storing processes can result in design rationale being misplaced (Company 2). Batch processing of paper annotations is complex (Company 2). Requirement: A process is required which simplifies the electronic storage of annotated documents with increased reliability through a reduction in manual input.
Current Process
Suggested Process
An electronic copy of the document is printed with a barcode containing the original document details
An electronic copy of the document is printed
Annotations are made on the document
Annotations are made on the document
The document is scanned
The document is scanned (potentially in batches)
Scans are manually renamed and placed into a general scan folder
The barcode is interpreted by software
The document is manually moved to the specific project folder
The document is automatically named, moved to the specific project folder and linked to the original document
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4.4.2 CONCEPT 2 - EXISTENCE AND ARCHIVING

All companies interviewed use some form of electronic archiving and most use hard-copy storage (Software review). Sometimes only released Rationale: documents are archived (Company 1). The reason behind the existence of a paper document is sometimes forgotten (Company 3). It is not known whether a paper document is current or can be archived or destroyed (Company 3). Requirement: A process is required where the rationale behind printing and expiry of a document is recorded.
Current Process
Suggested Process
A document is printed with a barcode containing information such as when it was printed, by whom and for what purpose Upon scanning of the barcode, the 'existence rationale' of the document can be retrieved
A document is printed
After some period of time the reason for its existence is forgotten
Confusion whether document should be disposed of or archived
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4.4.3 CONCEPT 3 - PRINT TRACKING

Some companies allow the use of printed documents for production processes. Any printed document approved by the quality manager is assumed to be the most recent version (Company 4). If a document is Rationale: replaced without destroying the original, for example if the original is lost, then multiple instances with different content may exist and there is no way of checking which is the correct version (Company 4). Typically this information is not generated by document management software (Software review). Requirement: A process is required which labels documents with details of when, by whom and why they were printed.
Current Process
Suggested Process
A document is printed with a barcode containing a unique identifier, and stamped as the sole released copy A unique identifier, and approval date and time are stored in a database
A document is printed and stamped as the sole released copy
The document is lost
A new copy must be printed and also stamped as the sole released copy
The document is lost and the database record is flagged as 'missing' A new copy is printed with a barcode containing a unique identifier, and also stamped as the sole released copy Upon document use, scanning the barcode will indicate whether it is the most recent document or the original 'missing' document
It is not possible to determine whether any future use is the most recent or the lost copy
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4.4.4 CONCEPT 4 - DYNAMIC REFERENCE STORAGE

All of the companies interviewed did not explicitly state the target document in their referencing system. The target document is not always contained in Rationale: the expected location (Company 1, Company 3). Sometimes the target document may have been updated and no longer be applicable to the referring document (Company 4). Requirement: A dynamic link to the target document is required.
Current Process
References from within document are specified by the target name
Suggested Process
References from within document are given a unique identifier and the target location is stored in a database
References manually looked up within the system folder structure
Document is printed or viewed on screen
Scanning barcode checks database for updated target location
Document is automatically retrieved
Reciprocal referencing lookup is possible
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4.4.5 CONCEPT 5 - VERSION VERIFICATION

Engineering drawings undergo many revisions (Literature 9). Often Rationale: manufacturing companies use existing drawings on repeat order of components (Company 3). Without proper version control and checking procedures the quality process cannot be guaranteed (Literature 8). Requirement: A method for manufacturers to confirm they possess correct version is required
Current Process
Suggested Process
Drawings produced
Drawings produced
Sent as printed copy or PDF to manufacturer
Version details made accessible from web server
Parts produced
Barcode embedded on drawings with link to current version
Sent as printed copy or PDF to manufacture
Scanning barcode runs server-side query to confirm current version
Parts produced
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4.4.6 CONCEPT 6 - PROCESS CONTROL AND FEEDBACK

Often a lack of management concern and a poor maintenance and inspection schedule results in failure of systems (Literature 9). Common issues with document management are a result of poor collaborative working and Rationale: project organisation both internally (Company 3) and externally (Literature 9). Detailed documentation of products and systems is essential (Literature 5). The lack of feedback in document receipt often results in critical action not being taken (Company 3). Requirement: A method is required to improve the reliability of inspection and maintenance during interaction between companies or departments.
Current Process
Suggested Process
Product manufatured and passed to client
Product manufatured and passed to client
No maintenance procedure imposed
Inspection barcodes placed at critical failure areas
Inspection schedule with safety accept or reject barcodes
Scanning barcode sends data back to design company
Warning flags if checks are not sent regularly or if reject code scanned
Designer fixes faults to ensure safety
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4.4.7 CONCEPT 7 - METADATA ACCESS

No software packages provide electronic access to document metadata once Rationale: it is printed (Software review). The storage of document metadata is critical to ensure a manageable and auditable paper trail (Literature 1). Traceability in safety critical engineering roles is vital (Literature 2). Requirement: The metadata should be available for a printed document in an electronic format.
Current Process
An electronic document contains detailed metadata
Suggested Process
An electronic document contains metadata
The document is printed
The metadata is encoded into a barcode and embedded on the document
The metadata is lost
The document is printed
Scanning the barcode reveals the document metadata
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5 DEVELOPMENT OF METHODS FOR APPLYING BARCODES

The previous section considered the motivation for an improved document management system and suggested possible concepts for solving the issue. This section extends this by considering how these concepts could be applied and explores the issues by applying them to a self-testing strategy, undertaking structured barcode testing and creating and analysing a questionnaire concerning the importance and usefulness of information.
5.1 SELF-TESTING OF CONCEPTS

This section uses a self-testing approach to validate and assess the concepts outlined in Section 4.6. A selection of the concepts are applied to a weekly project report and the methods of application are iterated and evaluated. The purpose of the self-testing strategy is to associate these concepts to a scenario for the project; to apply them concurrently to the working method with other project tasks and research; and finally to analyse and evaluate the concepts. By using a structured and systematic application with a detailed reflection and analysis of the particular concept being investigated, it will be possible to obtain first-hand experience on the effectiveness and limitations of the concept.

There are three main goals of this self-testing strategy: 1. Provide evidence to support theory through experimentation. 2. Accentuate unforeseen limitations of concepts. 3. Suggest refinements to concepts for inclusion in the systems architecture. A trial-and-error approach satisfies a carefully selected subset of the most important and basic requirements. This solution is [then] evaluated against other requirements. For those requirements that are not satisfied, modifications on the design are made to meet these requirements while preserving the required properties that it has already satisfied (Hong, 2005). The strategy will be iterative, and with each cycle, the method of applying the concepts will be refined to work towards a perfect system. After each iteration, a short report will be
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The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-Critical Industries generated outlining the techniques used to apply the concepts, and a brief discussion of the benefits and limitations discovered, which is represented visually in Figure 4.
F IGURE 4 S ELF TESTING PROCESS
REPRESENTATION
SELECTION OF CONCEPTS The engineer interviews and review of document management software packages has highlighted a number of areas in which barcodes can be applied to document management systems. Although not all concepts will be evaluated directly, the results generated may be applicable to these and will allow an analysis. The criteria of available hardware, available software, time resources required and potential application to a weekly report were applied to select the concepts for application, as shown in Table 11.
T ABLE 11 E VALUATION OF CONCEPTS FOR APPLICATION TO SELF - TESTING STRATEGY
Hardware Requirements No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Software Requirements No Yes No Yes Yes No Yes Project Timescale Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Applicable to Weekly Report No No Yes Yes Yes No Yes
Concept Review annotation capture Existence and archiving Print tracking Dynamic reference storage Version verification Process control and feedback Metadata access
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The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-Critical Industries WEEKLY REPORT CONTAINER To apply the concepts a weekly report container scheme will be used. A general report template will be set-up, updated each week with the relevant data and then released as a different version. The format of the weekly report container used is shown in Figure 5. A metadata core is well suited to incorporate version control, document decomposition, workflow management and linking to files and resources.
F IGURE 5 W EEKLY DOCUMENT REPOR T CONTAINER VISUALIS ATION
APPLICATION OF CONCEPTS TO STRATEGY This section describes the concept application and analysis for each iteration of the selftesting strategy. Suggestions from the literature, research activities and the analysis of previous iterations were used to develop the concept application methods. A summary of the application method for each iteration is shown in Table 12 and the detailed description of the each can be found in Appendix D.
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T ABLE 12 M ETHOD OF CONCEPT APPLICATION TO SELF - TESTING STRATEGY
Concept Area
Requirement Information is stored about a
Process Information about the document itself will be stored for each report.
Application A barcode can be used on the title page and contain information about the author and information within the document.
Metadata Access
document context and content
A document is cyclically released Version Control and then modified.
References and project timeline will be updated weekly and released as a new document version.
A barcode can be used on the report and contain information relating to version number. A barcode can be used alongside the section titles and contain information about the section version and original document location. A barcode can be used on the title page which sends confirmation data from individual users when scanned. A barcode can be used in the margin or as a footnote to provide a web link to the relevant media.
A document contains labelled Document Decomposition sections or other stand-alone documents.
Using the weekly report template as a container to hold the references and project timeline documents as individual sections.
A document is Workflow Management passed between users for input.
Confirmation of group member receipt of report can be either by Email, SMS or database update.
A document can be supplemented by Referencing further reading or external media
Links to detailed research on particular areas and external working examples
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One of the primary results from this study was the reflection on each iteration and the recommendations for future iteration development. Table 13 demonstrates the iterative development of each concept.
T ABLE 13 I TERATIVE DEVELOPMENT SELF - TESTING CONCEPTS
First Iteration Barcode in document Metadata Access with encoded metadata Barcode in document Version Control title on first page
Second Iteration Barcode on coversheet with encoded metadata Barcode on coversheet
Final Iteration Barcode on coversheet which contains database query to display metadata Small barcode in document title on every page linked to database version.
Barcode next to Document Decomposition document heading containing local filename Not implemented Workflow Management Barcode next to Referencing reference which contains text URL
Barcode next to document heading containing online filename Barcode on coversheet which sends confirmation email Barcode next to reference which contains text URL
Barcode next to document heading linked to database resource location Barcode on coversheet which updates database record Barcode next to reference which contains database query to generate URL
The literature review demonstrated that timeliness is one of the most important aspects in safety-critical management of documents and information. For the self-testing strategy this was evaluated in two ways. Firstly, the user input requirement for document revision (a common process to all three iterations) was assessed for the number of operations, mouse clicks, mouse drags and keypresses. The results are displayed in Figure 6. Secondly, the level
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The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-Critical Industries of automation for the main processes in the strategy was compared for each iteration and is shown in Table 14.
User Input Requirements for Document Revision

40 35 30 Frequency 25 20 15 10 5 0 Operations Mouse Clicks Mouse Drags Key Presses First Iteration 16 48 2 360 Second Iteration 9 21 1 0 Final Iteration 8 19 0 3 Future Iterations 2 2 0 0
(Limited for clarity)
F IGURE 6 U SER INPUT REQUIREMENTS FOR DOCUMENT REVISION IN SELF - TESTING ITERATIONS
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T ABLE 14 C OMPARISON OF PROCESS AUTOMATION FOR SELF - TESTING ITERATIONS
First Iteration Second Iteration Stage 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Process Review document Approve document Release document Store document Generate barcode Embed barcode on document Print or display document Scan barcode Display document information Determine version number Apply sectioning Confirm document receipt View previous versions View related documents Link to electronic document Manual / Automatic Manual Manual Manual Manual Manual Manual Manual Manual SemiAutomated Manual Manual / Automatic Manual Manual Automated Semi-Automated Automated Automated Automated Manual Semi-Automated Manual Manual Semi-Automated
Final Iteration Manual / Automatic Manual Manual Automated Automated Automated Automated Automated Manual Automated Automated Manual Semi-Automated Automated Automated Automated
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The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-Critical Industries The salient points from the critical reports have been extracted and presented in Table 15.
T ABLE 15 S UMMARISED DISCUSSION
OF SELF - TESTING ITERATIONS
Iteration
Salient reflection points Manual generation and embedding of barcodes is time consuming and prone to inconsistencies through user input error. Without compulsory input of metadata it is overlooked. Necessity to edit released document invalidates release procedure. Usability of barcode information is poor when stored as a block of text. Size and quality during embedding may render barcode unreadable. Excessive volume of information stored within metadata barcode due to structural tags. Local file storage is undesirable. Useful to locate barcode and content text on coversheet, but information
Method Development and Recommendations Structured metadata input form and display template for consistency of information. Release system with automatic barcode generation and embedding. Structured control of released versions. Barcode display size and quality testing.
First Iteration
Store information in database and use query to link to dynamic content.
Store document information on every page. Only input metadata and manage final released documents.
Second Iteration
is lost if torn off. Static barcode links to resources are unreliable. Compulsory input of metadata for every WIP document removes working flexibility. Integration of release mechanism to software packages is unreliable. - Continues overleaf
Use pre-determined inputs to reduce user input error e.g. dropdown menus.
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The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-Critical Industries Iteration Salient reflection points Scanning of workflow barcode was unreliable and had poor response rate. Use of network storage is desirable provided reliable connection is available. Final Iteration Use of single released format of PDF has better consistency. Automatic resizing of barcodes ensures all are readable. Automatic file storage and naming structure increases reliability of system. Combination of information storage via barcode on coversheet and small database reference on every page is useful. Short data query in barcode for database link reduces barcode size considerably. Method Development and Recommendations Need for barcode printing testing. Need for research into PDA identification for workflow management. Need for detailed consideration of document metadata elements. Need for consideration of information importance and useful features for interface design.
5.1.3 OVERVIEW
A set of general observations and further research activities will now be made, based upon the reflections from each iteration, the process time comparison and the automation comparison. Automatic resizing of barcodes at the point of embedding is a necessity in application to ensure their readability. Storage of detailed information within a barcode is undesirable as it results in a large barcode and the free-text format is often difficult to interpret. Storing document metadata within a database and using the content of the barcode to query it allows high volumes of metadata to be stored, but with a small barcode size.
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The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-Critical Industries Displaying document details with database software can display the metadata in a more useful format. The database query barcode should be embedded on every page of the document. Static reference links from barcodes are useful, but it is more reliable to store the URL in a dynamic database and use the barcode to run a query for the most recent resource location. Documents should only be managed when they are released to allow freedom in work practices for files with WIP status. Released documents should be stored in PDF format for consistency. The removal of repeated user input, especially keyboard entry, significantly lowers the chance of error through misspelling and non-conformance to the process. The strategy was also used to direct work in the following areas: Detailed consideration of document metadata elements. Consideration of information importance and useful features for interface design. Barcode display size and quality testing.
5.2 BARCODE FUNCTION TESTING

This section describes a method and results for assessing the readability of barcodes and produces a set of guidelines for how they should be implemented. One important observation from the self-testing and reflection was that barcodes which were readable on the authors PDAs were not readable for the other group members PDAs. For widespread adoption, it is important that the usability is maintained, irrespective of printer and scanner resolution and software functionality.

The main goals of the testing and the way in which they are investigated are shown in Table 16. The main factors which can influence the readability of the barcode when displayed or printed are image quality, display resolution, scanner resolution and barcode decoding software reliability and usability. Further information on these is available in Appendix E. The main factors affecting the barcode readability and how they can be tested in a structured manner are summarised in Table 17.
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T ABLE 16 G OALS AND ASSOCIATED INVESTIGATION METHODS FOR BARCODE FUNCTION TESTING
Goal 1 Highlight any unforeseen flaws in the barcode application. Review and discuss observed environmental effects and potential mitigations. 2 Confirm the barcode flaws suggested by the literature and theory. Determine whether the smallest readable size is in accordance with the prediction. 3 Compare the practical usability to that suggested by the literature and theory. Assess and compare the performance of the scanners and display methods. Assess and compare the performance of the scanning software. 4 Develop a set of guidelines for all display and scan media.
Investigation Method Noting observations on performance whilst undertaking structured scan testing. Using structured scan testing
Using structured scan testing for a range of scanner, electronic display and printed paper resolutions. Using structured scan testing for a range of software. Organising the research data to find the minimum acceptable size compatibility across all scanners and display methods.
For this testing, a set of custom eye charts will be produced. They are similar to those used by an optician, but contain barcodes instead of letters as demonstrated by Figure 7. The use of these creates a repeatable testing method, which will allow each of the factors affecting readability to be assessed and comparisons drawn between the available hardware and software. A classification was created to compare the minimum size that barcodes could be printed or scanned at. This is a one-dimensional reference to the number of modules contained within 1mm actual display size, and the categories used are shown in Table 20 for interpretation of the results. Each of the display methods were converted to a theoretical maximum number of modules/mm for the results discussion. A higher value for modules/mm indicates that an equivalent content can be displayed in a smaller barcode.
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T ABLE 17 A PPLICATION OF BARCODE TESTING METHODS TO FACTORS AFFECTING READABILITY
Factor affecting readability
Description
Testing Chart
Testing Method
For a barcode to be interpreted it must be possible to distinguish the Image Quality areas of high/low reflective property. These may be indistinct if the barcode has blurred edges or poor contrast. The display method forms the barcode modules Display Resolution through pixels, the size of which will affect the minimum size that the barcode can be displayed. The scanner will have a finite number of optical cells Scanner Resolution used to distinguish between the modules, which will affect the minimum size that the barcode can be read at. Barcode decoding software reliability and usability After reading the barcode, software is required to apply algorithms to interpret the pattern of modules and retrieve the data encoded within the barcode. Size Test Eyechart Scanning with a variety of software applications and recording minimum size for each software application. Size Test Eyechart Scanning with a variety of scanners and recording minimum scan-able size for each. Size Test Eyechart Displaying on a variety of monitors and printing resolutions and recording minimum scan-able size for each. Scaling Raster Eyechart Contrast Eyechart Scanning with a variety of different scanners and recording minimum/maximum contrast and scaling which is scan-able for each.
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Fading Eyechart Foreground Lightening
Background Darkening
Opticians Eyechart
Scaling Raster Eyechart Original Image
H
E Z
L P O T
D A F V
N E U C
Enlargement
Shrinking
Size Test Eyechart
Scalable vector image (lossless)
F IGURE 7 B ARCODE FUNCTION TESTING CHARTS
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The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-Critical Industries The hardware which was used for testing is listed in Table 18. The testing method adopted, processes and outputs can be represented visually by Figure 8.
T ABLE 18 A VAILABLE HARDWARE FOR BARCODE FUNCTION T ESTING
Office Laser Printers Home Inkjet Photo Inkjet Laptop Monitor Displays Touch-screen Tablet Monitor Desktop Monitor PDA Screen Barcode Scanner Scanners PDA Scanner Home flatbed scanner Office flatbed scanner
Scaling recommendation Scaled raster image eyechart 1 Image quality testing Faded vector image eyecharts
Observation and analysis
Contrastrecommendation
Display size recommendation
Image size testing
Scaled vector image eyechart Software recommendation
F IGURE 8 B ARCODE FUNCTION TESTING PROCESS REPRESENTATION
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The summarised results will now be presented and discussed. IMAGE QUALITY TESTING It is possible to scan the barcodes when the black modules have faded by as much as 80% and the white background is darkened by up to 50%. The scanning of resized raster images is only sensitive to shrinking, with a maximum 40% reduction. During reduction, the pixels which make up the modules are grouped together and an average value is taken. This means that the structure of the data itself is modified and becomes unreadable. The scalar barcode was resized by as much as 600% and the barcode was still readable. The limit for enlargement encountered was due to the size of the display method available and is dependent on the focal distance of the scanner. IMAGE SIZE TESTING The display size testing discussion is summarised in Table 19. A key for the size testing categories is shown in Table 20 for interpretation of the results.
T ABLE 19 D ISCUSSION OF BARCODE
DISPLAY SIZE TESTING
Results
Summarised discussion The greatest barrier to the readability of the barcodes was the display capability of the monitors with around 3 modules/mm (Category D). The second significant barrier was the barcode printing ability of the printers. At typical office resolutions, the printed chart was capable of displaying the highest
Table 21 Display and scan medium minimum barcode size compatibility matrix
category of modules/mm. However, using home inkjet at draft resolutions lowered the performance to that of the monitors, at around 3 modules/mm (Category D). The third significant barrier was the scanning and interpretation capabilities of the PDA Camera, with a common value of 4 modules/mm (Category B). The specific barcode scanner was far superior to the PDA cameras, as it was only limited by the display method. - Continues overleaf -
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The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-Critical Industries The flatbed scanners showed no problem in reading the document and reproducing it when the resolution was higher than that of the original printing. The scanning may cause problems if the document is marked or damaged as the imperfections will be reproduced as well. Software could be used to interpret and re-generate the barcode into a perfect electronic format before rereleasing the document, such as during photocopying. Not only did the software decoding ability for the PDA testing vary widely across different PDAs for the same program, but even across different software packages for the same PDA. Table 22 PDA and scan software minimum barcode size compatibility matrix The I-Nigma barcode decoding application achieved the same result for all PDAs tested, and so this is recommended as the most consistent (and incidentally, best performing) software. Repetition of borderline tests with a light shining on the paper showed an improvement for the PDA cameras (although the original result was recorded), which demonstrates the effect of environmental factors. Figure 9 Comparison of theoretical and empirical barcode display capability when scanned with specific barcode scanner For the PDAs the theoretical values far exceed the empirical values, suggesting there are features of the camera hardware which limit the ability of the scanner to view the information. For the Photo Inkjet printer, a similar difference can be seen, which is attributed to the printer being able to produce resolutions far higher than the scanner can read. The empirical values were typically one category lower than the theoretical values for displaying the barcodes.
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T ABLE 20 - S IZE CATEGORY LABELS
AND ASSOCIATED MODUL ES / MM
Label A B C D E F G
Modules/mm Potential Display size Smallest >5.0 >4.0 >3.3 >2.9 >2.5 >2.2 Largest >2.0
T ABLE 21 D ISPLAY AND SCAN MEDIUM MINIMUM BARCODE SIZE COMPATIBILITY MATRIX
x signifies untested
Scan Medium Specific Smartphone Barcode Camera Scanner PDA Screen Laptop 17" Monitor Laptop 15" Touchscreen Monitor x B Home Flatbed Scanner x Office Flatbed Scanner x
Display Medium
Desktop 19" Monitor Office Laser
Home Inkjet
Photo Inkjet
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T ABLE 22 PDA AND SCAN SOFTWARE MI NIMUM BARCODE SIZE COMPATIBILITY MATRIX
Scan Medium iPhone3 Camera RedLaser Scanning Software I-Nigma ScanLife E B D iPhone4 Camera E B D HTC Desire Camera C B B
F IGURE 9 C OMPARISON OF THEORETICAL AND EMPIRICAL BARCODE DISPLAY CAPABILITY WHEN SCANNED WITH SPECIFIC
BARCODE SCANNER
RESEARCH METHODS Whilst it is not possible to take into account every possible variable, particularly environmental factors such as shadows or lighting, this testing aims to develop some practical guidelines through structured testing of common barcode generation, display and scanning hardware and software.
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The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-Critical Industries Although this is only testing a small cross-section of technologies and variables, not only are the results useful enough to form a good first step to create practical guidelines, but the method may also be adopted by industry and tailored to their specific context such as the hardware and software available.
5.2.3 OVERVIEW
Following the extensive testing detailed above, six conclusions are made and a set of barcode size guidelines with a detailed process that organisations should apply are now discussed, together with an example implementation. The shrinking of raster images is undesirable. PDAs have very similar performance but this is highly dependent on the software used. Barcodes should only be scaled in a vector format, or interpreted and then regenerated at the desired size. Barcodes printed in black ink on white paper can withstand contrast changes of up to 50% paper darkening and 80% ink lightening. The effect of these in combination is untested. In practice, the maximum modules/mm for display methods are one category lower than the theoretical value. The main influences on barcode display size are the resolution of monitors (Category B-D), the resolution of home inkjet printers (Category D) and the scanning ability of PDA cameras (Category B). The barcode production should be set at the lowest tested value of the applicable hardware. A set of general guidelines have been created in the form of a table, which can be used to find the minimum printable size for a barcode at any encryption level and length of embedded data. Only alphanumeric characters have been considered (the content is smaller with only numeric characters or larger with kanji symbols and depends on the encoding method). The table can be seen in Appendix G. A usage strategy and example have been created in Figure 10.
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The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-Critical Industries Note: A script has been created to calculate the minimum string length at: http://www.qrproject.com/project/string_length.php
General Process
Example Application
Calculate length of string to be encoded
This is a test string to be encoded. It contains 63 characters.
Select level of Error Correction Capability (ECC)
Desired correction level: Q (25% of codewords can be restored)
Select scanner or display resolution capability (whichever is lowest)
Scanner: Honeywell MK7580 Barcode Scanner Category A Display: Home Inkjet 300dpi Category D So, minimum is Category D
Read off minimum printable size
QR version 4 (33 x 33 modules) Minimum printable size 12mm2
F IGURE 10 F LOWCHART DEMONSTRATI NG USE OF BARCODE DISPLAY SIZE GUIDELINES
5.3 INFORMATION IMPORTANCE AND USEFULNESS QUESTIONNAIRE

This section considers the information used in document management and investigates what information should be stored about a document and how it should be displayed. This is achieved through a review of existing metadata standards and a questionnaire targeted at engineers and academics. It then recommends which elements should be included to the systems architecture model and suggests useful features for the document management system graphical interface. The research into document management software concerned the features and not the detailed database content and structure. Also, for the purposes of the self-testing it was not necessary to integrate the methods fully with an existing document management system. It was acceptable to assume, therefore, that any information desired could be stored about the document. The information contained about the document for each self-testing revision can be seen in Table 23.
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T ABLE 23 M ETADATA STORED FOR S ELF - TESTING ITERATIONS
Baseline ID Title Author Storage Method Release Version Release Date
Second Iteration Third Iteration Systems Architecture ID Title Author Storage Method Release Version Release Date WIP File Location Identifier Title Description Author Created Format Subject Location Status Version Original Name -To be determined-
Release Location Release Location

It is necessary to determine what metadata should be stored. A mini-survey has a small number of questions and respondents, and was considered the best option to achieve this goal as they are useful for short projects and can be analysed easily without a computer (Kane, 1984). This would be in the form of a questionnaire, as an interview would provide too much information to process at this stage of the project. Research Question: What are the ten most important pieces of information to store about an engineering technical report?
There are three main processes involved in this research strategy: 1. Define research objectives and create interview questionnaire. 2. Selection of participants and performing of research. 3. Data analysis. As with the engineer interviews, a scenario-based research method will be used. This type of research method representing the use of a system or application with interaction scenarios focuses design reflection and supports envisionment and the consideration of alternatives (Carroll, 2000). Bangay (2010) categorises engineering documents into five categories . Due
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The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-Critical Industries to the different applications of these documents, the information stored about them is likely to be different. An analysis of the metadata for these document types is in Table 24.
T ABLE 24 D OCUMENT TYPES AND CURRENT ASSOCIATED METADATA ADOPTION
Document Type Technical Papers / Technical Reports Engineering Drawings
Metadata Discussion This information is specific to the engineering domain, however there is no industry-wide standardisation of this information. Information stored in drawing templates is typical and demonstrates a refined metadata set. These are automatically appended with metadata by servers during sending, hence their common adoption for a traceable record This has specific standards to which it must adhere, which cover the metadata requirements. This is typical and already demonstrates a refined metadata set.
Emails / Correspondence Engineering Documentation Sales Information / Inventories
It is necessary to restrict the selection to only one type of document. A Technical Report has been selected as the scenario document as it is a common document which contains unique information with no formal standardisation. It has also already been used as an example in the self-testing strategy and so will allow comparison between the current function and the idealised function. To select the metadata to be stored about the Technical Report it was necessary to consider various metadata standards for suggestions. Four standards were analysed: 1. The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI): Dublin Core Metadata Element Set 2. UK Government: e-Government Metadata Standard (e-GMS) 3. International Organization for Standardization (ISO): IEC 82045-2:2004 Document management -- Part 2: Metadata elements and information reference mode 4. US Library of Commerce (LOC): PREMIS Data Dictionary for Metadata Preservation From the analysis of these standards, a list of potential elements was created which can be seen in Table 25. All of these elements had valid reasons for use, however the self-testing had recommended that such large volumes of information should not be stored in a barcode and so a method was required to restrict this list for application.
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The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-Critical Industries To select these elements, a questionnaire will be devised where engineers and academics could select their top ten elements to store about the documents. Obtaining a ranking for those selected would provide information on the perceived value of the elements and then could be analysed to influence the interpretation and display of the metadata after the barcode is scanned. There are a number of options to achieve this, but it was felt that the best method would be a points distribution system, whereby the participants are given twenty points to distribute between their selected ten items to indicate the importance of each element. Another useful output from this questionnaire is to evaluate some of the concepts described in section 4.5. By phrasing the concepts as useful elements and collecting a score of how useful they are in the respondents opinion, a total can be generated to review which features should be incorporated into the final systems architecture model. This was inspired by the techniques used in web-based shopping such as Amazon (http://www.amazon.co.uk).
T ABLE 25 S UMMARY OF METADATA S TANDARDS ANALYSIS
Standard
Primary Metadata Categories
DCMI Contributor Coverage Creator Date Description Format Identifier Language Publisher Relation Rights Source Subject Title Type
Primary Metadata Formats
Text HTML text XML text RDF text
UK e-GMS Accessibility Addressee Aggregation Audience Contributor Coverage Creator Date Description Digital signature Disposal Format Identifier Language Location Mandate Preservation Publisher Relation Rights Source Status Subject Title Type HTML text XML text RDF text
ISO Identification Access Security Approval File representation Organizations, persons and roles Description Classification Release Validity Relation to other objects Relationship between documents Logbook References to external documents Distribution and subscription Archiving EXPRESS text XML text
US-LOC Object Identifier Preservation Level Object Category Object Characteristics Creating Application Original Name Storage Environment Signature Information Relationship Linking Event Identifier Linking Intellectual Entity Identifier Linking Permission Statement Identifier Relational database XML files
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The questionnaire used can be found in Appendix J. Of the 21 participants, one-third were academics and two-thirds were engineering professionals. A weighting factor of two was used for the important element category and then this value was added to the value rating to rank the importance results which are displayed in Figure 11.
Data Element Importance and Value Ratings Ordered by a combined weighted score (From 21 responses)
No. Responses Indictating 'Important' Data Element 0 5 10 15 20 References Description Master Author Contributor Version Creation Date Title Status Source Subject Identifier Classification / Type Rights Language Events Format Storage Distribution Publisher Preservation and Disposal Dynamic 0 10 20 30 40 50
Data Element Total Value Rating
F IGURE 11 D ATA ELEMENT IMPORTANCE AND VALUE RATINGS
ORDERED BY A COMBINED WEIGHTED SCORE
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Usefulness of Suggested Features

(From 21 responses) 0 - Unsure; 0 - Useless; 1 - Vaguely; 2 - Moderately; 3 - Highly; 4 Exceptionally
Link to electronic version of report document Documents which reference this report document References contained within report document
Similar report documents
Previous report document user comments Common documents also accessed by previous report document users More from same author/project/company Report document value score, computergenerated from properties and associations 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
'Usefulness' Total Score
F IGURE 12 U SEFULNESS OF SUGGEST ED FEATURES RESULTS
The 21 responses shown in Figure 11 and Figure 12 are now discussed. The high usefulness of storing external document references is in accordance with the results of the engineer interviews and suggests that users wish to access the resources without actually having to read the document itself. The significance of reciprocal referencing is also demonstrated as the documents which reference this report was scored as highly as the outward references. Most document management systems do not typically boast this feature. Little trust is placed in the evaluation of a documents usefulness by a computer.
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The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-Critical Industries A high usefulness was attributed to the comments from previous document users. This is a technique that is often used in knowledge management systems and CAD design. Information regarding the preservation and disposal of the document was not considered to be important. This implies that the report does not have an expiry date unless it is superseded by another version. No responses considered the actual server query used for a dynamically-generated document to be important. It is possible that this is due to the brief specifying a technical engineering report. A further study could produce multiple questionnaires for the different document types outlined in the methodology The publisher of the document was also unanimously considered to be of lower importance than the other elements, and on reflection this data element should have been combined with the source data element. The description element was ranked very highly on both importance and importance rating. Generally, the total importance and importance rating' were closely linked, apart from: creation date, source, subject and classification/type. This shows that these elements were considered amongst the most important, but not of high importance themselves.
5.3.3 OVERVIEW
From the discussion a ranking of important elements and features has been created in Table 26. Four useful features of an engineering technical report document management are highlighted: 1. Link to electronic document 2. External references to and by the document 3. Similar report documents 4. Previous document user comments
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T ABLE 26 - C ATEGORISATION OF ELE MENT IMPORTANCE
Element Importance Elements or features References Description Master Author Contributor Version Highly Creation Date Title Status Source Subject Identifier Classification / Type Rights Language Events Moderately Format Storage Distribution Publisher Preservation and Disposal
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6 OVERALL RESULTS AND INTEGRATED APPROACH PROPOSAL

In the previous section, research activities including self-testing, barcode function testing and an information importance and usefulness questionnaire were used to further evaluate the concepts. This section develops these concepts into a final set of system components for application to this report document, providing an example systems architecture and interface design. It then demonstrates a deployment process which describes how the overall methods used for generating this system can be implemented in industry.
6.1 PROPOSED SYSTEM COMPONENTS

To demonstrate the application of the research, all of the recommendations from previous studies are combined to suggest a final system implementation. By assuming the scenario of a future iteration of the self-testing strategy, concepts are proved by applying them to this report document. Further information on the final self-testing iteration is available in Appendix D for reference. This study suggests four main components which could be applied to a document management system through the use of barcodes, as described in Table 27. The implementation of these components can be modular, i.e. any single component or combination can be used, but all of them have been applied to this report document. A dynamic barcode stores a URL appended with a database query. A server-side script will then display the relevant information in a web-browser window when scanned with a PDA barcode reading application. A static barcode stores the data in XML format which will be displayed by any barcode reading application when scanned with a PDA.
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T ABLE 27 S UMMARY OF MAIN SYSTEM COMPONENTS AND APPLICATION TO CURRENT DOCUMENT
Component
Description
Metadata Use Description Master Author Contributor Creation Date Title Subject Classification/Type Language Format Publisher
Barcode Use The complete set of metadata for this report document including the compulsory and desirable elements will be stored in a database. A dynamic metadata barcode on the coversheet will be used to access this information. Each of the individual sections will also have a static metadata barcode which contains a restricted set of compulsory information to describe their content. Any references made within the report will be stored in a database along with the source (project or author) and a dynamic barcode will be used to access this information and display the document. The version, approval status and historic
Storage of Metadata Access contextual information about the document
Linking to external Referencing documents and resources Document Status version control Document access, Storage retrieval and archiving Version Approval Events Rights Distribution Preservation and Disposal Storage Source References
editing events for the document will be stored in a database. A dynamic barcode will be embedded on the title page to access this information. The access rights for the document, extent of distribution, and level of preservation and disposal will be stored in a database. A dynamic barcode will be embedded on the title page to access this information.
6.2 PROPOSED SYSTEMS ARCHITECTURE

Example diagrams for a systems architecture will now be presented to show how the final system implementation could be represented. Viewing the system from different perspectives is a useful way of extracting each of the elements described by Krogstie. The most applicable to this system is the 4+1 Architectural View Model shown in Figure 13. The 4+1 view model uses multiple, concurrent views for
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The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-Critical Industries describing the architecture of software systems. Each of the views can be represented by a number of representation diagrams described in Table 28.
T ABLE 28 D ESCRIPTION OF VIEWPO INTS FOR THE 4+1 ARCHITECTURAL VIEW MODEL
Viewpoint Development View Physical View Scenario View Logical View Process View
Description System components and software management overview Topology of system hardware and software components and runtime behaviour of system Functionality that the system provides to end users Sequence of interaction between objects and processes Communication and dynamic interaction of system components
The application of the UML representation to each of the viewpoints for this system is shown in Table 29. Only one of each diagram type has been produced these are for illustration purposes only. To create the whole systems architecture each diagram would have multiple associated diagrams. Hence not enough information is provided to create the final system but the method which would be used is demonstrated.
F IGURE 13 T HE 4+1 ARCHITECTURAL VIEW MODEL T ABLE 29 D ETAILS OF UML SYSTEMS ARCHITECTURE
DIAGRAMS
UML Representation Viewpoint Component Diagram Deployment Diagram Use Case Diagram Sequence Diagram Activity Diagram Physical View Scenario View Logical View Process View
Extent Overall System Version Control
Example Figure 14 Figure 15 Figure 16
Development View Overall System
Release Document Figure 17 Release Document Figure 18
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Metadata System
DIAGRAM DESCRIPTION identifier Description, master author, contributor, creation date, title, subject, classification/type, language, format, publisher uses Type: Component Diagram Viewpoint: Development View System components and software management overview
Referencing System
identifier uses Source, references
User Interface
Database System
uses
Document Management System
uses
Status System
Version, approval, events uses identifier
Storage System
identifier
Rights, distribution, preservation and disposal, storage Name
KEY Component
<<method>>
Aggregation
Receiver
Port X,Y,Z
Relationship Connector Transmission Data
F IGURE 14 O VERALL SYSTEM C OMPONENT DIAGRAM (D EVELOPMENT VIEW )
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<<device>> : PDA <<device>> : Scanner <<artifact>> : Document Client * * <<execution environment>> : Database Management System * * * Release <<device>> : Workstation View <<device>> : Document Store
DIAGRAM DESCRIPTION Type: Deployment Diagram Viewpoint: Physical View Topology of system hardware and software components and runtime behaviour of system
KEY
<<type>> : Name <<artifact>> : Document Client
Node
<<device>> : Document Store ** <<execution environment>> : Document Management System <<device>> : Printer * *
<<type>> : Name
Component
Information flow
<<artifact>> : Naming Schema |Function
Interface
Association Multiplicity
F IGURE 15 O VERALL SYSTEM D EPLOYMENT DIAGRAM (P HYSICAL VIEW )
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System
DIAGRAM DESCRIPTION Type: Use Case Diagram Viewpoint: Scenario View
Create Project
Functionality that the system provides to end users
<<extends>>
Top Package::Project Manager
Enter Project Details
<<extends>>
Release Document
<<uses>>
<<uses>> Top Package::Document Database Up-version Document KEY
Top Package::Engineer Actor Check Version Number Level::Name Name Use Case
<<method>>
Aggregation
Association
F IGURE 16 V ERSION CONTROL U SE CASE DIAGRAM (S CENARIO VIEW )
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DIAGRAM DESCRIPTION Type: Sequence Diagram Viewpoint: Logical View Sequence of interaction between objects and processes Message Name Top Package::Engineer Database Server Document Client Document Store
KEY Lifeline
Activation (swimlane)
Message call/return Communication Partner Internal Communication pin (node) Class (Boundary)
Release document Send data Check for existing Name
Class (Actor) Create record Level::Name Name New Embed barcode Barcode Generator Confirm Display confirmation Check upload Initial State
Class (Object)
Final State
F IGURE 17 R ELEASE DOCUMENT S EQUENCE DIAGRAM (L OGICAL VIEW )
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DIAGRAM DESCRIPTION Type: Activity Diagram Viewpoint: Process View Display error [Check file type] PDF [Check unique] Upload file NEW Display error [Database Connection] EXISTS EXISTS Rename [Up-version or New] Communication and dynamic interaction of system components
Create database record
Generate barcode and embed
Display error OK
[Embedded check] Display error
KEY Display confirmation Description [guide] State
Decision
Parallel activity (fork/join) Activity
Initial State
Final State
F IGURE 18 R ELEASE DOCUMENT A CTIVITY DIAGRAM (P ROCESS VIEW )
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6.3 PROPOSED INTERFACE DESIGN

There is a great deal of previous research on interface design, which considers user behaviour, content organisation, navigation and input. For the purposes of this project, the elements considered in the interface design are only those based upon the conducted research namely the findings of the engineer interviews, information usefulness and importance questionnaire and the self-testing strategy. The interface design in Figure 19 is for illustration only. It is included to demonstrate how the conclusions drawn from the previous work could be applied to the display of document information upon scanning of the document barcode. The four revised concepts are all incorporated to this design to demonstrate their application, and the relevant features of the interface design are described in Table 30.
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T ABLE 30 S UMMARY OF INTERFACE
DESIGN EXAMPLE FEATURES
Feature Grouping of elements Arrangement of groups
Application description Elements are grouped by purpose. This permits inclusion/exclusion of particular groups for a modular implementation. Groups are arranged by importance into three sections, critical information, highly important information and moderately important information.
Justification Engineer interviews Information importance and usefulness questionnaire Information importance and usefulness questionnaire
Fonts and Borders
Font sizes and typefaces are used to direct the users attention depending on importance. Similarly for highly important groups thicker borders are used to draw attention to these. The version number is highlighted in green if this is the most recent version and red if a newer version exists, which allows a quick reference.
Separator bars
These split the interface into three sections of groups. Firstly critical elements (identifier, document title, version, link to electronic copy, document description), then highly important information (references, version history and authors) and finally moderately important information (previous user comments, further document information and storage and access information).
Information importance and usefulness questionnaire
User input
To ensure a robust process and minimise user input, only two elements are included addition of a comment to the document record or uploading a new version of the document.
Self-testing strategy
Active hyperlinks
Many elements are active to show further resources and to link directly to references for quick access.
Information importance and usefulness questionnaire
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Document record unique identifier used throughout system for reference Large but italicised font shows importance but supplementary information
Large, bold font to focus users attention to critical data
Version number in red to quickly show higher version exists
Clear link to electronic copy of this document
No modification of details is permitted (apart from comments). Changes must require upversioning of docment First separator marks boundary between crucial information and highly important information
[0029] Document Title Version 2.2 [electronic copy]

History of all versions and release dates with links to these documents. Existing version marked and if higher versions highlighted in bold, red font
Upload new version
Detailed document description or abstract of report

Links to documents which reference this report, and documents that this report references Combination of graphical and textual representation 1. Industry barcode standards T 2. Initial brainstorm O 3. Meeting minutes 12/02/2010 4. Document manual - Section 4
Contribution Master Author: Contributors: Paul Wallace PW Hamish McAlpine HCM Steve Culley SJC
Version History
2.3 10/03/2010 2.2 08/02/2010 << 2.1 05/02/2010 1.4 03/02/2010 ...
External References
Author and contributors are important information for finding further information about the project
1. Project summary 2. Final presentation BY 3. CAD Model design
This Document
Bold outline used to draw users attention Further Document Information Subject: Further, but not crucial, document information presented in smaller font and less condensed Classification / Type: Format: Final year project [See more] Report Document PDF Previous User Comments
Author
PW HCM PW
Second separator marks boundary between highly important and moderately important information
Comments
The introduction does not discuss the... Stress calculations are incorrect on p.172... Diagram required for section 6... Add Comment
Date
12/01/2002 13/01/2002 23/02/2004
Previous user comments are important to gain document context
Storage and Access Information
Link to similar documents or to main project folder
Status: Rights: Distribution: Publisher:
Submitted for assessment Supervisor access required UK academics University of Bath Auto-archive 2 weeks after release
Denotes security requirement to perform these actions
Least important information in small font at bottom of interface
Preservation and Disposal:
Filtering allows quick access to comments
F IGURE 19 E XAMPLE INTERFACE DESIGN
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6.4 PROPOSED DEPLOYMENT METHOD

The methods undertaken in this project have generated a general process which can be used to investigate the requirements and then develop and implement a barcode-driven document management system. This is represented by Figure 20. It is recommended that industry follows this process by using the research methods described in this report.
Audit paper use

Engineer interviews Operational observation Review of document corpus
Audit functionality
Exising document management system features Important information questionnaire Useful information questionnaire
Review hardware and software

Existing document management system integration Database type and storage capacity Scanning and display hardware and software capabilities
Develop system
Create concepts Self-testing and evaluation
Create system
Create systems architecture Design interfaces Create software for use Implement and test
F IGURE 20 P ROPOSED DEPLOYMENT M ETHOD
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7 CONCLUSIONS
This section presents the motivation for the project and re-states the aims and objectives. It then discusses the methods used and main findings for each of these. A set of recommendations to industry is then made.
7.1 MOTIVATION FOR PROJECT

The use of paper documents can lead to many issues such as the loss of design rationale during annotation; the use of documents which have been superseded since printing; and the inability to verify the context of a printed resource. Developments in electronic systems have enabled the management of the electronic versions of these documents, but traditional processes are still required for their paper counterparts and these are often poorly implemented. Hence there is a necessity to bridge the gap between the static paper document and the dynamic electronic systems which are in widespread use. Alternatives to paper will not be in mainstream adoption for many years and so the application of an existing and wellestablished technology, barcodes, could be used to rapidly and reliably bridge this so-called paper-digital divide.
7.2 AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

The aim of the project was to investigate the potential role of barcodes for the management and augmentation of printed and electronic documents. The main research objectives to achieve this were: 1. Explore the technologies and current methods used for barcodes and document management. 2. Produce a set of concepts for enhancing the current practices through the application of barcodes. 3. Prove and develop the concepts. 4. Create a systems architecture and interface for the revised methods of document management. 5. Analyse the findings and produce a set of recommendations for applying the process in industry.
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7.3 METHODS AND MAIN FINDINGS

Each of the five Research Goals (RG) will now be addressed by describing the techniques applied to investigate them and the main findings and contributions from each.
RG Method Review of literature and failure cases Issues for document management were extracted. Analysis of document management software 1 Required features of document management were extracted. Engineer interviews Current implementation of processes and software were extracted. Potential barcode application concepts Revised processes were created for 7 concepts Main Findings or Contribution Main factors affecting safety are information overload, display method and timeliness. Document indexing is crucial to maintain a manageable and auditable paper trail. The storage of annotations and rationale is highly important. Paper management routines are not provided by software. A modular application of features is required. In practice, document management is a mixture of manual and electronic processes. Paper is commonly used for official document review and approval Document metadata is not thoroughly stored. Referencing of documents and resources is poorly implemented. Primary areas for applying barcodes to a document management system are: 1. 2. 3. 2 4. 5. 6. Review annotation capture Existence and archiving rationale Print tracking Dynamic reference storage Version verification Process control and feedback
7. Metadata access For QA procedures, barcodes are a viable way of creating and maintaining a persistent document record. - Continues overleaf -
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RG Method Self-testing strategy Concepts were evaluated through three iterations of a management process for weekly report documents Barcode function testing Barcode fading, scaling and minimum generation size tests were conducted for various displays and scanners 3 Main Findings or Contribution Referencing is a critical area for analysis and development. The use of barcodes for feedback and verification is unreliable. Barcode generation should be automated. Storage of large volumes of text should be a fail-safe only. Documents should only be controlled upon release. A standard release format be used PHP technology exists to embed barcodes on PDF documents. Barcodes should be produced in a scalable vector format and automatically resized. Guidelines in the form of a matrix were created for minimum display size with various hardware and software components. Printed barcodes are scannable with up to 80% paper darkening and 50% ink lightening. Barcodes should be regenerated upon replication or electronic capture of paper documents. The limiting factors on display size are monitor resolution, use of inkjet printers and PDA scanner capability. Importance and Usefulness questionnaire Important metadata elements were extracted. Useful features were extracted. Most useful features are a link to the electronic document, external references and previous user comments. 10 essential metadata elements were suggested and include description, master author, creation date and title.
- Continues overleaf -
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RG Method Proposed systems architecture The 4+1 view model was applied to concepts and the systems architecture 4 diagrams were represented using UML notation 5 Recommendations to industry Main Findings or Contribution Example model was generated for systems architecture. Example interface was generated for database information display. Proposed deployment method was created. Barcode system was successfully applied to this report. -See next section-
7.4 RECOMMENDATIONS TO INDUSTRY

This project contributes not only to the detailed analysis and illustration of the potential benefits of barcodes, but also provides specific guidance to industry, in the form of a systems architecture (Section 6.2), guidelines for the application of barcodes (Section 4.4) and also the methods to determine what information to store and how to display it (Sections 4.2, 4.3, 5.1, 5.3). The main findings are applicable to industries of any size and field. When determining a potential barcode application, similar flowcharts for conceptual applications (Section 4.4) should be produced, as they represent the information obtained in a clear format as a starting point for the system architecture design. Barcodes can be generated and embedded onto documents using simple scripts written in many programming languages. Running these scripts on a server is quicker and more reliable than installing them on individual machines. Barcodes can be applied at the point of document release or printing to automate QA processes with paper documents. The traceability and accountability of QA processes can be improved by using barcodes to link the document to an electronic system. Using a web-based document management system and interface the simplest method for processing and displaying document information stored in the database. The guidelines for the display size of barcodes on monitors, scanning abilities of PDAs and the volume of information encoded in the barcode should be adhered to (Section 5.2). Manual generation and embedding of barcodes should be avoided, as errors are commonplace. A database-linked storage system is desirable as it can facilitate large volumes of metadata storage and dynamic updating of content and references.
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The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-Critical Industries It is possible to achieve a low-cost implementation of barcodes. For companies without an existing centralised server and database system, a static barcode record would be useful for storing machine-readable information and does not infer the costs related to the hardware and software development of a new system. A custom software app should be written for PDAs to fully utilise the content of static barcodes.
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8 FURTHER WORK
The methods used throughout the project were structured and justified to provide a contribution to future research in this field, and can be considered as a progression towards a realistic implementation of the technologies. Through the research activities the project was able to suggest a number of areas for further research, described in Table 31.
T ABLE 31 F URTHER WORK ACTIVITI ES
Suggested field of further work Embedding of barcodes on alternate file types
Description The embedding of barcodes on Microsoft Word and PDF documents was demonstrated with VBA and PHP scripts, respectively. This work could be extended to include other document types used in industry, such as CAD drawings.
Comprehensive testing of scanner, display and printer hardware Embedding barcodes at the point of printing
Using the testing methods described, a matrix was created for the minimum barcode size compatible for various display and scanning hardware. This could be extended to include all hardware used in industry. The possibility of managing not only formally released documents, but WIP documents, faxes, photocopies etc. was suggested. By conducting detailed analysis of print device drivers and software this could be achieved.
Research into the use of PDAs for user identification Industrial application and testing
The affordances of PDAs for workflow management were highlighted, but their use as a unique user identifier required greater time resources than were available. Detailed investigation and testing of the capabilities and related security issues could be conducted. A number of recommendations were made for the application of barcodes for document management. Although a self-testing strategy was applied, industrial application through the methods suggested could be used to confirm the benefits proposed.
Consideration of alternate document types
The research activities focused on the scenario of a technical engineering report. This was selected from four other document types, and the repetition of these research activities for other document types would provide a greater understanding of engineering document management.
Alternative barcode display methods
It was suggested that barcodes could be etched onto metal components during manufacture as an application of the project work to component tracking.
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9 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Throughout this project, much guidance and support was provided by individuals who will be acknowledged now: Prof. Steve Culley and Dr. Hamish McAlpine for their insights, advice and supervision. Prof. Chris McMahon for his advice and guidance. Dr. Mansur Darlington Dr. Crispin Hales James Barrett The four individuals who participated in the Engineer Interviews. The 21 respondents to the Information Importance and Usefulness Questionnaire.
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REFERENCES
ISO 9001:2008 Quality management systems - Requirements. ISO IEC. ISO/IEC 27001:2005 Information technology -- Security techniques -- Information security management systems Requirements. ISO IEC. BS EN 82045-2:2001 Document Management -- Metadata elements and information reference model. BS. BS ISO 15836:2009 Information and Documentation - The Dublin Core metadata element set. BS ISO. Confederation of European Paper Industries, 2010. CEPI: facts and figures [online]. Available from: http://www.cepi.org/Content/Default.asp?pageid=101 [Accessed 26 November 2010]. Lowe, A., McMahon, C. A. and Culley, S J., 2004. Characterising the Requirements for Engineering Information Systems. International Journal of Information Management. 24(5), pp.401-422. Zantout, H. and Marir, F., 1999. Document management systems from current capabilities towards intelligent information retrieval: an overview. International Journal of management. 19(6), pp. 471-484. Balasubramaniuan, V. and Bashian, A., 1998. Document management and web technologies: Alice marries the mad hatter. Communications of the ACM, 41(7). McGettrick, A., May, R. and Ward, R., 2000. Principles underlying the development of competencies for engineers. Computing & Control Engineering Journal. 11(1), pp. 40-43. Tekin, E and Coughlan, J.M., 2010. A mobile phone application enabling visually impaired users to find and read product barcodes. Smith Ketterwell Eye Research Institute, California. Romanski, G., 2003. Requirements, configuration, management and traceability for safety critical software. Requirements Engineering Conference, September 2003, 11th IEEE International, p.304. McMahon, C.A., Caldwell, N.H.M., Darlington, M.J., Culley, S.J., Giess, M.D., Clarkson, P.J., 2009 KIM Grand Challenge Report - Principles for Through-life Management of Engineering Information. Documentation. Bath, England: University of Bath. DCMI, 2010. Dublin Core Metadata Initiative Status Report. [online] Available from: http://dublincore.org/news/communications/statusreports/2011/03/ [Accessed 17/04/2011]. PREMIS, 2005. Data Dictionary for Preservation Metadata: Final Report of the PREMIS Working Group. [Online] Available from: www.oclc.org/research/projects/pmwg/premisfinal.pdf [Accessed 07/04/2011].
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The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-Critical Industries Cabinet Office, 2006. e-Government Metadata Standard - Version 3.1 - 29 August 2006 [Online] Available from: http://interim.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/media/273711/egmsv3-1.pdf [Accessed 17/04/2011]. Anon, 2011. Barcode comparison chart. [Online] Available from: http://www.mecsw.com/specs/barcodechart.html [Accessed 17/04/2011]. Boy, G. and Barnard, Y., 2005. Knowledge management in the design of safety critical systems. European Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Engineering, Toulouse. Wishart, J., Ramsden, A. and McFarlane, A., 2007. PDAs and handhelds: ICT at your side and not in your face. Journal of Technology, Pedagogy and Education. 16(1), pp. 95-100. De Groote, S.L. and Doranski, M., 2004. The use of personal digital assistants in the health services: results of a survey. J Med Libr Assoc., 92(3), pp. 341348. Han, S.Y., Jung, E.H., and Cho, S.Y., 2005. A robust digital watermarking adopting 2d barcode. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. 3691, pp. 717-723. Bangay, S., 2010. Establishing the value of engineering information. Thesis (MEng). University of Bath, Bath. Sabric, E.H., Gupta, A.P. and Beitler, M.A., 2007. Purchase order management: best practices. Process technology and change management. Florida: J Ross Publishing. Becta, 2009. Emerging technologies for learning, software and internet analysis: QR Codes and other 2D barcodes [online]. Available from: http://emergingtechnologies.becta.org.uk/index.php?section=etn&rid=14633 [Accessed 15/11/2010]. Hori, T. and Matsumoto, M., 2004. The challenges of wireless and mobile technologies the RFID encourages the mobile phone development. Proceedings of the 3rd international conference on mobile and ubiquitous multimedia, 2004. Hoke, G.E., 2005. Barcodes and document management: 7 points you need to know to make barcodes work for you[online]. AIIM E-Doc Magazine, Available from: http://www.aiim.org/Resources/Archive/Magazine/2005-Jan-Feb/29450 [Accessed 23/11/2010]. Baum, G., 2005. Bridging the paper-to-digital divide with 2D barcode technology [online]. AIIM E-Doc Magazine, Available from: http://www.aiim.org/Resources/Archive/Magazine/2005Jan-Feb/29450 [Accessed 23/11/2010]. Hirakawa, M. and Lijima, J., 2009 A study on digital watermarking usage in the mobile marketing field: cases in japan. Logistics and industrial informatics, Lindi, 2nd International Conference, pp. 1-6. Sprague, R. H., 1995, Electronic Document Management: Challenges and Opportunities for Information Systems. Management Information Systems, 19(1), pp. 29-49.
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The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-Critical Industries Goulielmos, A. and Tzannatos, E., 1997, Management information system for the promotion of safety in shipping, Disaster Prevention and Management, 6-4, pp. 252-262. Cans, J. H. and De Zulueta, F., 2004, Using Hypermedia to Improve Safety in Underground Metropolitan Transportation. Multimedia Tools and Applications, 22, pp. 7587. Scott, M.D. and Omalley, P.E., 2002, A database approach to the safety life-cycle. [Online] Available from: http://www.auqa.edu.au/files/auqf/paper/paper_c7.pdf [Accessed 18/04/2011] Kajko-Mattsson, M.,2005. A Survey of Documentation Practice within Corrective Maintenance, Thesis, Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University. Storey, N., and Faulkner, A., 2002 Data Management in Data-Driven Safety-Related Systems. Proc. 20th Systems Safety Conference, Denver, CO., August 2002, 466-475. Keraron, Y., 2009. Annotations to improve the using and updating of digital technical publications. Journal of research in engineering design. 20(3), pp. 157-170. Gusikihin, O., Rychtyckyj, N., Filev, D., 2001, Intelligent systems in the automotive industry: applications and trends, Knowledge and Information Systems, 12(2), pp. 147-16 Zieger, A., 2001, Keep the Air Force Flying. Knowledge Management, No. 14631822 Zhuge, H., 2001, Knowledge ow management for distributed team software development. Thesis, Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing. Casteleiro, M.A., Julio, D., Prieto, M.J.F., Perez, R., Paniagua, H., 2009, Executing medical guidelines on the web: Towards next generation healthcare. Knowledge-Based Systems, 22(7) pp. 545-551. Parnas, D.L., 2009, Document based rational software development, Knowledge-Based Systems, 22-3, pp. 132-141. Intelligent Software Design Selected papers from the 6th international conference on Software Methodologies, Tools and Techniques. Howes, N.R., 2002, Project Management Systems. Information Management, 5(4-5), pp. 243258. Fisher, C.W. and Kingma, B.R., 2001, Criticality of data quality as exemplified in two disasters. Information & Management, 3(2), pp. 109-116. Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR), 2002. The Electronic Signatures Regulations 2002 No. 318, London: HMSO. Walker, R., 2009. White Paper: Achieving The Paperless Office [Online]. Available from: http://www.quikforms.com/WHITEPAPERAchievingThePaperlessOffice.pdf [Accessed 30/03/2011]. TOGAF, 2009. The Open Group Architecture Framework Version 9 Enterprise Edition: Introduction. [Online] Available from: http://www.togaf.info/ [Accessed: 17/04/2011].
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The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-Critical Industries ISO/IEC 10746-3:1996 Information technology -- Open Distributed Processing -- Reference Model: Architecture. ISO IEC. King, S., 2010. Gartners Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies [Online]. Available from: http://myventurepad.com/steveking1/53696/gartners-hype-cycle-emerging-technologies [Accessed 30/03/2011]. Anon, 1975. The Office of the Future, 1975, Business Week, no. 2387, 30 June 1975, pp. 48-70. Heikenfeld, J., Drzaic, P., Yeo, J.S., and Koch, T., 2011. Review Paper: A critical review of the present and future prospects for electronic paper. J. Soc. Inf. Display 19, 129. Krogstie, J., 2007, Conceptual Modelling in Information Systems Engineering. Springer-Verlag Berlin. Kim, C.H., Weston, R.H., Hodgson, A., and Lee, K.H.,. 2003. The complementary use of IDEF and UML modelling approaches. Comput. Ind. 50, pp35-56. Office for National Statistics, 2010. Split-second precision : Census questionnaires hot off the press. [Online]. Available from: http://2011.census.gov.uk/Did-you-know.../How-the-censusworks/Split-second-precision [Accessed 13/04/2011]. Amazon, 2011. Kindle Wireless Reading Device. [Online] Available from: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B002Y27P46/ref=kindlesu-1 [Accessed 14/04/2011]. Hamano, M., 2010 RFID Implementation in Japan. 7th annual RFID World Asia Conference, Singapore. Feng, S., Manmatha, R., 2010. hierarchical, hmm-based automatic evaluation of ocr accuracy for a digital library of books. ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Conference on Digital Libraries, 2006. Denso Wave, 2011. QR Code Features. [Online] Available from: http://www.qrcode.com/qrfeature-e.html [Accessed 17/04/2011]. Holley, R., 2009. Analysing and Improving OCR Accuracy in Large Scale Historic Newspaper Digitisation Programs. D-Lib Magazine, 15(3). Burd, S.D., 2011. Systems Architecture. 5th ed., Thomson. Department for Transport, 2010, DVLA Information on driving licences. Nielsen, 2010. Mobile Snapshot [Online] Available from: http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/mobile-snapshot-smartphones-now-28of-u-s-cellphone-market/ [Accessed 14/04/2011]. Smolski, R., 2011, iQR is the New QR Code [Online] Available from: http://2d-code.co.uk/iqrqr-code/ [Accessed 14/04/2011]. McGettrick, A., May, R. and Ward, R., 2000. Principles underlying the development of competencies for engineers. Computing & Control Engineering Journal. 11(1), pp.40-43.
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The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-Critical Industries National Information Standards Organization. 2004. Understanding metadata. Bethesda, MD: NISO Press.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Shaw, M. and Garlan, D., 1996, Software Architecture: Perspectives on an Emerging Discipline, Prentice Hall. Shaw, M., and Garlan, D., 1993, An Introduction to Software Architecture - advances in Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering, Vol. 1, World Scientific Publishing Co. Rob, P., Coronel, C., Crockett, K., 2008. Database systems: design, implementation & management Thomson Learning; International Ed. edition. Kedar, S., 2007. Database Management Systems. 1st ed. India: Technical Publications. Finkenzeller, K., 2003. RFID Handbook: fundamentals and applications in contactless smart cards and identification. 2nd ed. John Wiley & Sons. Kato, H., Tan, K.T. and Chai, D., 2010. Barcodes for mobile devices, Cambridge University Press. Wiggins, B., 2000, Effective Document Management Unlocking Corporate Knowledge, Gower Publishing Limited. Bryman, Alan. 1989., Research Methods and Organization Studies. Taylor & Francis. Kane, E., 1984, Doing your own research. Marion Boyars, London. Carroll, J.M., 2000, Making Use: Scenario-Based Design of Human-Computer Interactions. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England. Cloud, P. A., 1998, Engineering Procedures Handbook. Noyes Publications . Robson, C., 2002, Real world research: a resource for social scientists and practitioner. 2nd Ed., Blackwell, Oxford. Rembar, C., 1979, The Law of the Land: the evolution of our legal system. Norton, Michigan. Hong, Z., 2005, Software Design Methodology. Butterworth-Heinemann. Black, R., 2002, Managing the Testing Process - Practical Tools and Techniques for Managing Hardware and Software Testing, 2nd ed. John Wiley & Sons. Tidwell, J., 2005. Designing interfaces. O'Reilly, Beijing; Farnham.
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APPENDICES
The following appendices are provided to supplement and support the information presented in this report. Appendix A Appendix B Appendix C Appendix D Appendix E Appendix F Appendix G Appendix H Appendix I Appendix J Review of Literature and Failure Cases Detailed Discussion Engineer Interview Form Diagram and Targeted Questions Engineer Interview Detailed Results and Discussion Self-testing Iteration Method and Analysis Barcode Function Testing Hardware Elements Affecting the Readability of QR Codes Barcode Function Testing Charts Barcode Display Size Calculation Table Barcode Application Group Brainstorm Information Importance and Usefulness Questionnaire
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APPENDIX A REVIEW OF LITERATURE AND FAILURE CASES DETAILED DISCUSSION

A study by Goulielmos and Tzannatos (1997) investigated the use of Management Information Systems (MIS) for the promotion of safety in shipping. They highlight statistics suggesting that the majority of accidents in shipping are due to human error; for example the findings of the Maritime Transportation Research Board of US Dept. of Commerce in 1976 stated that human error was responsible for 80% of accidents in shipping. They argue, however, that many of these cases attributed to human error were, in fact, system errors used for a human judgement, which although correct in the given data context, resulted in an accident. The reason suggested for this is that the critical safety information is often concealed to the user through the transmission of large volumes of unnecessary data, and that the vital information is not presented in a friendly way depending on the familiarity and frequency of the tasks. It is suggested that care should be taken with the integration and compatibility of different software systems to avoid this. The idea of accidents being caused by human decisions based upon poor information is also a theme investigated by Fisher and Kingma (2001), who state that decisions are often based on available information. If this is flawed, or the process of integration of the data is flawed, or its communication is flawed, then decisions based on that data are more likely to be flawed. They analysed the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986 and the shooting down of an Iranian Airbus by the USS Vincennes in 1988, both of which resulted in a significant loss of human life. Their study focuses on data quality provided to the engineers and operators, and they suggest the categorisation of the data errors into: accuracy, completeness, consistency, relevance, fitness for use and timeliness.
One interesting element of this study is timeliness. Many safety-critical applications must react quickly to analyse data and make decisions for action. Surprisingly, they suggest that text-based displays lead to fewer errors in these situations than graphic-based displays. The idea of information overload is commonly attributed to both accidents, where vital data
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The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-critical Industries cannot be easily sourced, either through the abundance of meaningless data, or under the pressure of a fast-response requirement. Another common cause for the accidents was a lack of a reliable review procedure: for the NASA case, key engineering managers were bypassed in the decision making process; for the US Navy case the commanding officer did not have sufficient time to validate the information according to the standard procedures. The idea of response time is critical in emergency evacuation procedures, as covered in a study of fire safety in an underground train system by Cans and Zulueta (2004). They looked at the current procedures and developed a hypermedia information management system to simplify and hasten operator safety tasks. They achieved this by creating a user-friendly interface with integrated graphics, sound, video and 3D models, with a simple linear structure for the user to follow through using a touch-screen. In a safety-critical application, they suggest the use of a dedicated system, as external events should not distract the operator from the emergency itself. In contrast to the suggestion by Fisher and Kingma (2001), the use of dynamic maps and video links were shown to be a very effective method of displaying information for the user to make decisions, and the response time was considerably lower than the original text-based emergency procedure. Often, information management systems are used as a way of extracting human experiencebased knowledge and organising it for future use. In the article by Zieger and Lloyd (2001), a military aeroplane repair depot uses a combined DMS and Knowledge Management (KM) system to do exactly this. By analysing usage statistics and working patterns of the experienced engineers, the KM system could keep records of their personal activities to gain insight for future use. This can enable knowledge to be passed on when engineers leave the depot, and increase the productivity of the workforce. This implies the importance of storing access data and using an active record management system. When considering the development of a software program, Parnas (2009) describes the importance of documenting and supporting design decisions by stating that decisions are often found to be based on unstated assumptions, unfounded beliefs and false information. It is recommended therefore that the design rationale should be stored, but further that it should be located in a separate document so as not to confuse the final design facts. To distinguish essential from incidental information, he recommends that information which may change at short notice should not be stored in the same document as information which is considered permanent. Parnas describes a number of other factors which will affect information usability, such as directness, abstraction and organisation.
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The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-critical Industries Consideration must also be made for the engineers controlling and maintaining safety-critical electrical systems, such as railway command and control systems, air traffic control systems, and urban road traffic signalling systems. The paper by Kajko-Mattsson (2005) describes poor or missing documentation of these systems was crucial in their safety during both operation and maintenance. The system documentation is often neglected during the product development due to lack of time and resources or simply through lack of interest. She argues that manuals which are updated dynamically may be used to decrease maintenance costs, increase maintenance productivity and improve the usability of the system software. Storey and Faulkner (2002) look at data management in safety-related systems and argue that the current international standards on data control are not specific enough, generic standards, such as IEC 61508 say nothing about the generation, testing or control of data. Similarly, industry-specific standards in the civil aircraft, military, nuclear and railway sectors give very little guidance in this area. Another safety standard concerning safety lifecycle management requirements, ANSI/ISA S84.01, is investigated by Scott and OMalley (2002). It considers the design process whilst creating a manageable, and equally importantly auditable, paper trail without burdening staff. One of the main ideas presented in this report is the design of the database interface. Inputs should be automated wherever possible through the use of autocomplete or predetermined options from menus, which makes the system more intuitive and reduces inconsistencies in a multi-user environment. Simple systems could be integrated to allow checking and approval of records or documents through links located at the point of viewing. They suggest that the greatest challenge with information management systems is the lack of clear linking of documents and the scattering of data throughout multiple, independent records. In a fast-reaction environment, document housekeeping is of low priority. If multiple accidents happen simultaneously, a backlog could occur and potentially cause an accident itself! Keraron (2009) describes support maintenance processes for military aircraft and for a gas terminal. He suggests that graphical annotation on non-structured technical documents is essential in collaborative working. To achieve this, the use of layers to represent document annotation is suggested for digital archiving.
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APPENDIX B ENGINEER INTERVIEW FORM DIAGRAM AND TARGETED QUESTIONS

The scenario diagram and targeted questions for the Engineer Interviews are now presented.
Messages and Announcements
Version Control Information Management System
Resource Linking
Collaborative Working
Document Sharing
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Topic General Discussion Messages and announcements Version control Collaborative working Document sharing How are important company/project/client/supplier notices displayed or distributed? Are company announcements in a paper or electronic format? Are feedback methods used for confirmation of receipt? Is a traditional file structure or a database-driven system used? Are there security checks for document revision? Are there verification procedures for document release? Current practice Common issues Resource linking Suggested improvements Is the electronic file storage system centralised on a server or on individual machines? Is there a specific software/hardware environment to access documents? What information is stored about documents? E.g. Author, Project Name, Date How are resources referenced within documents? Is the information accessible from external sites? How is the document review process managed? Is there a central location for project information? Is project information restricted to certain individuals? Are there security checks for access rights? Are there systems in place to control duplication of documents? How are documents from external designers or contractors handled? Targeted Questions
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APPENDIX C ENGINEER INTERVIEW DETAILED RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

A summary of the notes taken during the Engineer Interviews is presented below along with a discussion of these findings. Overall the information management within the company is process-driven and not technology-driven. Through these strict processes within each of the topics the information is managed effectively to provide an auditable trail which is essential for the nature of the work and to comply with ISO 9001. Most document processes are a mixture of manual control from employees with Project Manager, Control Manager and Quality Assurance Manager monitoring of their application. The responsibility is placed upon employees to uphold these processes for ownership, sharing, release and version control. For example, there is a network-driven folder structure with project files; versioning through filenames and manual history tables; documents released in PDF format with checking through printed sign-off sheets; and released documents only updated by the original master author. The employees recognise that this is time-consuming, but they appreciate the importance of the strict auditable Company 1 process and perhaps enjoy the flexibility of the process-driven information management. Almost all documents are stored electronically with paper only used for informal review and during the checking processes before document release. The reports and checking sheet packs are printed and archived into securely stored boxes. Memos and announcements are made in different ways depending on their purpose or target: Company-wide memos are electronic through email or on an intranet homepage, whereas project-wide memos are face-to-face or through individual emails. There are no formal checking procedures for receipt or acceptance of these announcements. An electronic information management system is in use, but this is predominantly for referencing standards and external documents, and is not seen favourably due to the limitations of the search functions. Supplementary documents and resources are referenced manually from within reports and do not have any electronic linking to the resource location. Company The document management system is viewed through one unified interface, but
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The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-critical Industries 2 it incorporates two systems, one for CAD models and one for project information and resources, which are linked together through the part numbers (BOM structure). The company is working towards a paperless system, whereby all paper documents are scanned and stored electronically but then archived for IP reasons. Information is shared through the electronic system which also manages the collaborative working information flows. Similarly, all announcements are on an intranet homepage and it is the employees responsibility to be up-to-date on information relevant to their work area. There are no strict QA procedures or standard templates for report documents and these are typically the responsibility of the employee to obey the electronic procedures for document management. The electronic IM system is relied upon for organising, presenting and sharing information An IM system is used to manage all data relating to project, which is linked to a separate CAD file system via the part numbers. CAD models and drawings are all informal to allow the designer flexibility until they are entered into the BOM structure. All other project work is stored in one central database and different information is available to different departments and individuals. Version control and document release is managed manually and then the system Company 3 is updated to reference the most recent document, with all previous versions being moved to an archive folder. The use of printed documents is allowed, provided that the user has found the most recent version at the point of use and then printed it themselves. Printed documents are not passed between users. During design review meetings, printed documents are annotated and then given to the relevant designer to update changes. The document is then stored for the designers own reference, but no formal record of the rationale is stored centrally, either on paper or electronically. This company has an IM system which has evolved from many custom systems and processes and it is patched together to work as one system. It uses a Company 4 combination of manual spreadsheet tables for listing files stored (which provides document identifiers) which are then linked into the overall IM system. This is sometimes complicated and results in lost information. No formal record is kept of announcements, and these are typically done in meetings, the frequency of which depends on the department.
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The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-critical Industries One of the most interesting practices is that paper documents are allowed and relied upon on the shop floor, but extremely strict procedures are in place to manage these documents. Only one printed document can exist, verified by an official stamp from the QA department. This is then stored in a project filing system, with manually-updated cards for who, why and when the document was removed from the folder. Before a new version can be put into the folder, the old version must be tracked down and destroyed. It is therefore assumed that any stamped, printed document is the most recent version and can be trusted fully. Within the office environment, most documents are electronic, but printed documents are allowed for review and are not controlled. Documents are treated as WIP files with personal ownership until they are entered into the formal record system. After this, change notices are written and passed to the QA department or the master author for updating a document.
Use of paper Paper is still common and universally used for document review and annotation. Company 4 uses paper extensively, even to the extent that an official document (commonly created) must be printed, signed, scanned and the printed copy then destroyed. Seemingly this is a waste of paper, but it demonstrates that the wet ink signature attitude is still prevalent and electronic authorisation through digital signatures is not always trusted. Interestingly, the extent of paper document storage varies considerably. Company 2 archives all paper documents including design rationale comments and then shares electronic copies. Company 3 only keeps them for as long as they are required by the designer responsible for that element, who then stores or discards the paper copy at their discretion. Both Company 1 and Company 4 archive printed copies of released documents. Company 2 attempts to run paperless where possible, with electronic communication; and editing, sharing and access to files. Any compulsory printing, for example annotating large drawings, is then scanned, entered back into the system, and linked in to the IM system via the particular components part number. This is their method of controlling paper documents: convert them to an electronic format and store them with everything else. Most companies see that there is an issue with document management, in particular with outof-date paper versions. This is especially true of Company 3, where only electronic documents are trusted, and all drawing templates state DO NOT USE A PAPER DRAWING
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The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-critical Industries GIVEN TO YOU. PRINT YOUR OWN COPY. This demonstrates a heavy reliance on the technology of the system for quality assurance. In stark contrast to this, Company 4 is an example where they have solved the same issue by using only paper and a strictly-controlled, process-driven document management practice. Any document can be printed, annotated, edited or discarded, which allows the designers useful freedom and flexibility in their working routines. A document can only be used for manufacture or production processes if it has an official released colour stamp from the quality officer, and manual filing processes are used for management. The idea here is that only one copy of a printed released document can ever exist and so it can be trusted fully. This allows all annotations to be carried forward to the next document user and increases the document usability. Both methods of paper document control are valid and this demonstrates how the use of a strictly electronic system is not always the most effective solution. In criminal justice, the presumption of innocence phrase coined by Sir William Garrow Innocent until proven guilty (Rembar, 1979) is somewhat analogous to the document status principles which Company 1 and Company 4 share: a document is WIP until proven released. Both companies have a high proportion of process-driven document management, which can be attributed to the strict QA procedures required for ISO 9001 compliance (Company 1) and large clients quality standards (Company 4). Counter-intuitively, this also correlates to the degree of automation each company uses: stricter QA means less system automation. Typically human error would be seen to be the cause of failures, however here they are trusted to follow procedures correctly and the result is a reliable working practice. Electronic Systems The companies had varying levels of computerisation which were created and implemented in different ways, despite some of them offering similar services. Company 2 has the most comprehensive electronic management system. Everything can be accessed through one interface, which seems to increase designer efficiency in finding and accessing information. The easy sharing of resources through this integrated system lends itself well to rapid development and collaborative working. Although the heavy reliance on the technology-driven handling of file structures, document naming and version control is potentially worrying if the system is not configured correctly, it does allow the designers to focus on the design tasks instead of the housekeeping which the process-driven management style of Company 1 requires.
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The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-critical Industries Company 3 uses what could be described as a custom PLM system, which has evolved and been gradually implemented to meet the changing company requirements, compared to the out-of-the-box PLM software package utilised by Company 2. It is likely that most established engineering companies will have to take this parallel integrate and evolve approach, as they simply cannot afford the time or resources for a series changeover. Although the system of Company 3 has some identified areas for improvement, it works well for the logical and wellestablished engineering practices which they use, whilst enabling modern technologies such as CAD/CAM, resource sharing, email and accounting. However, document management practices such as file naming and version control cannot be managed by common sense alone, and problems arise when the traditional procedures are not seamlessly implemented through the available technology. This often results in the loss of files and component relationships in CAD systems through poor collaborative working practices. No correlation can be drawn between the company classification and whether they use a traditional folder structure or database for storing documents or CAD models. Company 1, a cutting-edge marine consultancy, uses local server folders for both documents and CAD; whereas Company 4, with paper-driven document management for the shop floor, uses a complex and globally-accessible database for both of these. The underlying message is this: a company could have any mixture of the processes and technologies discussed above, i.e. every company is unique. Hence, any proposed general solution should be modular as there is no one-size-fits-all solution.
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APPENDIX D SELF-TESTING ITERATION METHOD AND ANALYSIS

The application process for each self-testing iteration will now be presented.
FIRST ITERATION
The WIP document will be written as normal using a word processing package. When the document is ready for release, it will be manually saved as a PDF and moved into to a released documents folder. Specific tags will be manually populated with the document metadata and encoded into a barcode. The barcode will then be copied and pasted manually into the released PDF document.
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Document ready for release
QR Code generated with following data stored as XML tags Document ID Document Title Author Release Date Version Number File Location
QR Code manually embedded on document and document officially released
Document printed or displayed on monitor
QR code scanned
Document information displayed on monitor
Manual check of version number
QR Code Content
<docid>proj_plan_lit_rev</docid> <title>Project Plan and Literature Review</title> <author>Paul Wallace</author> <date>29-11-2010</date> <version>002</version> <stored>local</stored> <location>C:\Users\Peadub\ Documents\University\Final Year Project\Released Documents</ location>
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SECOND ITERATION
A word document template was generated which contains VBA scripting. When a new instance of the document is generated (a weekly report for example), a form appears prompting the user to enter the document id, title, author etc which is stored in the document metadata. A ribbon bar on the template can be used to populate a table on the cover sheet with the metadata. Some parts can be edited such as the document title and the author, and others cannot, such as the latest version number and location. The word template document is then edited and saved manually as the WIP document. Using the ribbon buttons, the document can be released. This takes the metadata, formats into the standardised tag format, generates the barcode automatically and embeds the barcode on the document. This embedding of the metadata and barcode image in a table is done using bookmark placeholder in the template document. The document version number is automatically updated and the new document is saved automatically as a released PDF document.
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New document created from template
Window automatically displayed prompting metadata input
Document edited as normal
WIP file can then undergo further editing
Document metadata tags and barcode automatically generated and embedded on document
Document release button automatically generates PDF with unique filename
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RELEASED
Metadata Unmodified: Document ID Metadata Potentially Modified: Document Title Document Author Document Storage WIP File Location Metadata Compulsorily Updated: Release Version Current Release Location Current Release Date Barcode Content
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FINAL ITERATION
The metadata is stored in a MySQL database and a set of PHP scripts have been generated to manage: Released file upload, naming, storage and access PDF coversheet generation Barcode generation, resizing and embedding Metadata updating, storage and display
The documents are created and edited in any format. When they are ready for release they should be saved in a PDF format. A webpage has been created to upload the released file, and at this point the user must either enter the metadata for a new document, or select a previous released document to update. The script automatically stores and renames the file and enters the metadata into a MySQL database, with every uploaded file appended with a unique identifier. The user can filter all of the documents stored in the database by using a simple web form, for example searching for a keyword within the subject, or a specific author. The released documents can be downloaded via a web-link, and the PDF file is automatically appended with a coversheet containing the document metadata and a barcode which runs a web-based database query to display the document metadata.
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Document created and edited as normal
When ready for release, document saved as PDF
Document metadata entered into web-based upload form
Released PDF uploaded and stored on server with unique filename. Metadata stored as database record
Web-based form allowed filtering of all metadata elements to find required document
7a
Script automatically generates coversheet with metadata and barcode for database query
8a
Scanning barcode opens database record of document metadata in web-browser
6a
Document can be downloaded using generated link
6b
New version can be uploaded using generated link
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APPENDIX E BARCODE FUNCTION TESTING HARDWARE

The available hardware for the Barcode Function Testing is now presented.
PRINTERS
Report Name Make Office Laser Home Inkjet Photo Inkjet Model Resolution Source (DPI) Canon IRC5030i HP Epson Deskjet 1000 600 300 http://www.canon.co.uk/ http://welcome.hp.com/country/uk/en/cs/home_c.html http://www.epson.co.uk
Stylus Photo PX810FW 2400
MONITORS
Report Name Make Model Screen Type Screen Resolution (MP) Laptop Monitor Touch-screen Tablet Monitor Desktop Monitor Samsung Syncmaster 19 HP Toshiba Envy 17 Portg M400 LED anti-glare TFT active matrix TFT active matrix 1280 x 1024 19 http://www.samsung.com/uk/ 1920 x 1080 1024 x 768 Diagonal Screen Size (inches) 17.3 12.1 http://www.hp.co.uk http://www.toshiba.co.uk/uk/ Source
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PDA/SMARTPHONE SCREENS
Report Name Make Model Screen Type Screen Resolution Diagonal Screen Size Source (MP) Apple iPhone3 AMOLED PDA Apple iPhone4 AMOLED HTC Desire AMOLED 320 x 480 640 x 960 480 x 800 (inches) 3.5 3.5 3.7 http://www.apple.com/ http://www.apple.com/ http://www.htc.com/uk/
BARCODE SCANNERS
Report Name Make Model Resolution (mm) Source http://www.honeywell.com/sites/uk/
Barcode Scanner Honeywell Genesis MK7580 0.19
PDA CAMERA SCANNERS

Report Name Make Model PDA Camera Resolution (MP) Source http://www.apple.com/ http://www.apple.com/ http://www.htc.com/uk/
Apple iPhone3 3 Apple iPhone4 5 HTC Desire 5
DOCUMENT SCANNERS
Report Name Office flatbed scanner Make Canon Model Resolution (DPI) Source 5400 IRC5030i 600 http://www.lexmark.com/ http://www.canon.co.uk/
Home flatbed scanner Lexmark
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APPENDIX F ELEMENTS AFFECTING THE READABILITY OF QR CODES

The Barcode Function testing was targeted at various factors which affect the readability of the barcodes. Further information on these is now provided to clarify their application to the testing.
IMAGE QUALITY
The operating principle of QR codes is the segregation of an image block into areas of high/low reflective property. If the software is not able to determine between these areas then the code cannot be read. This may occur if the image generated has blurred edges or poor contrast. One important consideration is the contrast ratio of the image itself i.e. the difference in reflective property of the white background and the black modules. If the distinction between the two areas is not great enough, the software may not be able to interpret the embedded data correctly.
40% darkened background 40% faded foreground
The degradation during scaling for raster and vector images is shown in below. To ensure that the image itself does not degrade in quality when printed at different sizes a scalable image format known as vectors could be used. There are a number of established vector graphic formats, such as Vector Markup Language [.vml] (Microsoft) and Adobe Illustrator [.ai] (Adobe). There are software compatibility issues with these formats, most significantly when they are developed by a particular company, and so a recognised standard format must be used. The Scalable Vector Graphic [.svg] is a recommended standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and work has been carried out on recommended formats for mobile devices (http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/).
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Raster image blurrs during scaling.
Vector image can undergo lossless scaling.
DISPLAY RESOLUTION
One of the key parameters in this study is the control of printed documents. Evidence from the self-testing strategy suggests that the resizing of QR barcodes during embedding and printing can be a significant problem for lower-resolution scanners such as the camera on PDAs. The controllable variables here would be the resolution and quality used in the output of the printed document. For printed documents each module should be made up of four or more dots to ensure that it is viewed as a square by the interpretation software (Denso Wave, 2010). Considering only one dimension therefore suggests that the resolution of the printer should be two times higher than the minimum module size; i.e. for a module size of 0.1mm, the printer should be able to print dots which are 0.05mm in diameter. There are significant benefits to displaying the QR barcode on an electronic display as well. The technology review section describes many uses of barcodes such as electronic ticketing and links from web logs (blogs) where the ability to scan them from a PC or laptop monitor is important. For both of the electronic display methods, the investigation should consider the resolution of the display as this affects the minimum display size of the barcode.
SCANNER RESOLUTION
The resolution in displaying the barcode is important, however it seems logical that the ability of the scanner is the limiting factor on size i.e. it is desirable to be able to print the barcode small, but useless if the scanner cannot read it. The maximum resolution of the
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The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-critical Industries scanner should be lower than the module size (Denso Wave, 2010), i.e. if the modules are 0.1mm, then the scanner must have a maximum resolution lower than 0.1mm to allow decoding of the barcode. The camera function on PDAs or smartphones can also be used to take a picture of the code, and then use software to decode it. Another alternative which must be considered is the scanning of paper documents for digital conversion or reproduction. This method is different to other hardware as it is merely interpreting a barcode which has already been produced. The testing for this will need to determine whether a document can be printed, scanned and reprinted at the same resolution whilst maintaining the original barcode readability.
QR DECODING SOFTWARE USABILITY AND RELIABILITY

After reading the barcode, software is required to apply algorithms to interpret the pattern of modules and retrieve the data encoded within the barcode. The specific barcode readers will typically provide this function internally and output the data to a screen or PC for analysis. For a PDA or smartphone, a similar application can be installed to interpret the image captured by the camera. There are a number of different scanning applications which are freely available for download. These are often online scanners, downloadable PC tools, or apps for smartphones. As described in the Literature Review, there are many different manufacturers and models of smartphone, each of which run different mobile Operating Systems (OS). Even further, there are many different applications available for reading the QR codes. By scanning the same barcode with various phones, operating systems and barcode reading applications, the usability of each can be determined. The software apps which are common across the available hardware are the i-Nigma, ScanLife and RedLaser.
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APPENDIX G BARCODE FUNCTION TESTING CHARTS

The charts which were used for the Barcode Function testing will now be presented. 1. QR Barcode Raster Scaling Test Chart Enlargement 2. QR Barcode Raster Scaling Test Chart Reduction 3. QR Barcode Background Fade Testing Chart 4. QR Barcode Foreground Fade Testing Chart 5. QR Barcode Display/Scanner Size Capability Testing Chart
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QR BARCODE RASTER SCALING TEST CHART ENLARGEMENT

QR Code Version 3 (29 x 29) / ECC: M / Mode: 8bit (UTF-8) / Size: 10.15mm (2.9mod/mm) Content: http://www.quickmark.com.tw
Original Size
200%
300%
400%
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500%
600%
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QR BARCODE RASTER SCALING TEST CHART - REDUCTION

Original Size
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
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QR BARCODE BACKGROUND FADE TESTING CHART

10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
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QR BARCODE FOREGROUND FADE TESTING CHART

10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
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QR BARCODE DISPLAY/SCANNER SIZE CAPABILITY TESTING CHART

QR Code Version 3 (29 x 29) / ECC: M / Mode: 8bit (UTF-8) Content: http://www.quickmark.com.tw
A (5.0 mod/mm)
B (4.0 mod/mm)
C (3.3 mod/mm)
D (2.9 mod/mm)
E (2.5 mod/mm)
F (2.2 mod/mm)
G (2.0 mod/mm)
H (1.8 mod/mm)
I (1.7 mod/mm)
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APPENDIX H BARCODE DISPLAY SIZE CALCULATION TABLE

Error Correction Capability L M Q H Version Hardware Capability Category A Category B Category C Category D Category E Category F Category G Modules (5.0 mod/mm) (4.0 mod/mm) (3.3 mod/mm) (2.9 mod/mm) (2.5 mod/mm) (2.2 mod/mm) (2.0 mod/mm) Minimum QR Code Display/Print Size
21 25 29 33 37 41 45 49 53 57 61 65 69 73 77 81 85 89 93 97 101 105 109 113 117 121 125 129 133 137 141 145 149 153 157 161 165 169 173 177 4 5 6 7 7 8 9 10 11 11 12 13 14 15 15 16 17 18 19 19 20 21 22 23 23 24 25 26 27 27 28 29 30 31 31 32 33 34 35 35 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 6 8 9 10 11 12 14 15 16 17 18 20 21 22 23 24 26 27 28 29 30 32 33 34 35 36 38 39 40 41 42 44 45 46 47 48 50 51 52 53 7 9 10 12 13 14 16 17 19 20 21 23 24 26 27 28 30 31 33 34 35 37 38 40 41 42 44 45 47 48 49 51 52 54 55 56 58 59 61 62 8 10 12 13 15 16 18 20 21 23 24 26 28 29 31 32 34 36 37 39 40 42 44 45 47 48 50 52 53 55 56 58 60 61 63 64 66 68 69 71 9 11 13 15 17 18 20 22 24 26 27 29 31 33 35 36 38 40 42 44 45 47 49 51 53 54 56 58 60 62 63 65 67 69 71 72 74 76 78 80 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 41 43 45 47 49 51 53 55 57 59 61 63 65 67 69 71 73 75 77 79 81 83 85 87 89
25 47 77 114 154 195 224 279 335 395 468 535 619 667 758 854 938 1046 1153 1249 1352 1460 1588 1704 1853 1990 2132 2223 2369 2520 2677 2840 3009 3183 3351 3537 3729 3927 4087 4296
20 38 61 90 122 154 178 221 262 311 366 419 483 528 600 656 734 816 909 970 1035 1134 1248 1326 1451 1542 1637 1732 1839 1994 2113 2238 2369 2506 2632 2780 2894 3054 3220 3391
16 29 47 67 87 108 125 157 189 221 259 296 352 376 426 470 531 574 644 702 742 823 890 963 1041 1094 1172 1263 1322 1429 1499 1618 1700 1787 1867 1966 2071 2181 2298 2420
10 20 35 50 64 84 93 122 143 174 200 227 259 283 321 365 408 452 493 557 587 640 672 744 779 864 910 958 1016 1080 1150 1226 1307 1394 1431 1530 1591 1658 1774 1852
==> ==> ==> ==> ==> ==> ==> ==> ==> ==> ==> ==> ==> ==> ==> ==> ==> ==> ==> ==> ==> ==> ==> ==> ==> ==> ==> ==> ==> ==> ==> ==> ==> ==> ==> ==> ==> ==> ==> ==>
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
Paul Wallace
Number of characters to encode
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APPENDIX I BARCODE APPLICATION GROUP BRAINSTORM

The following diagram was generated after a brainstorming session within the project group. The topic for brainstorming was potential applications for barcodes and is based upon the group member experience and understanding of the technology.
Aiding Disabilities
Usage Monitoring
Electronic Ticketing
Games Workflow Management & Document Tracking
Marketing & Advertising
User Identification
Bridging PaperDigital Divide
Links To Files & Resources
Potential applications for barcodes

Logistical Tracking
Feedback
Data Capture & Statistical Analysis
Version Control
Geographical Location
Payment Systems
Learning Environments
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APPENDIX J INFORMATION IMPORTANCE AND USEFULNESS QUESTIONNAIRE

This study will be used for a university project entitled The use of barcodes for document management and version control in a safety-critical engineering environment. The intention is to assess the importance of information which can be stored about a document from different users perspectives. From this the possibility of storing, accessing and displaying this information using two-dimensional barcodes can be assessed. Brief: Think of a situation where you have been given a printed technical engineering report. What are the most useful pieces of information to know about this report document to ensure that you interpret it correctly and to enable you to use it effectively? Included with this overview is a questionnaire form with two tables which should be filled out. Please read the data elements and their descriptions carefully. The first table asks you to specify important data elements for the report document and rank them. For the ten Data Elements which you consider to be the most important from the list, mark in the Important Element column using a tick or cross. For the ten selected data elements, 20 points should be distributed to compare the relative importance of each of them. There are no upper or lower limits to the number of points one data element can be allocated. Enter this as a series of ticks, crosses or a number into the Value Rating column. The second table suggests possible uses of information and asks you to judge their relevance to the report document. For the eight Information examples, enter their relevance by marking the appropriate box with a tick or cross.
Any information provided will be used anonymously in the study. The completed questionnaire forms may be included in the appendices of the report for reference. PLEASE RETURN THE COMPLETED QUESTIONNAIRE TO pw236@bath.ac.uk Thank you
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The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-critical Industries Q- What are the most useful pieces of information to know about a printed technical engineering report document to ensure that you interpret it correctly and to enable you to use it effectively?
Important Element (select 10 items) Value Rating (distribute 20 points between the important items selected)
Data Element 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 Contributor Master Author Creation Date Description Format Identifier Language Publisher References Rights Source Subject Title Classification / Type Preservation and Disposal Storage Status Distribution Events Version Dynamic
Description Person/entity who has made contributions to the document Person/entity responsible for managing the document Point in time of initial document generation Free-text description of the document or abstract File format, physical medium, or dimensions of the document Unambiguous reference to the document Language of the document Person/entity responsible for making the document available Relation to other objects and resources used in the creation of the document Security rights held for document property and access Project or department for which document was created Key words and phrases associated with the document Name given to the document which is common to all revisions Nature or genre of the document Level of preservation of the document for archiving / point in time to indicate disposal Document storage method and location Open, ready, approved, closed document / work in progress or released document Spatial topic of the document, e.g. for UK release only Historical tracking of document actions e.g. move, edit, save Revision number of the document and release date Real-time generation query, e.g. what query was run on database to produce document
[QUESTIONNAIRE CONTINUES OVERLEAF]
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The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-critical Industries Q- If the following information were available, how relevant would it be to the report document?
Information 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Previous report document user comments Common documents also accessed by previous report document users Report document value score Similar report documents More from same author/project/company References contained within report document Documents which reference this report document. Link to electronic version of report document Useless Unlikely Unsure Possibly Essential
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ME40321: PROJECT REPORT

THE USE OF QR CODES FOR DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT IN SAFETY-CRITICAL INDUSTRIES

Stephen Culley Hamish McAlpine

Department of Mechanical Engineering FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND DESIGN

FINAL YEAR MEng PROJECT REPORT

The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-Critical Industries

19th April 2011

The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-Critical Industries

19th April 2011

The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-Critical Industries

1.5.1 1.5.2 1.5.3 1.5.4 1.5.5 1.5.6 2

Document Management Software Package Analysis.............................................................. 18

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4.3.1 4.3.2 4.3.3 4.4

4.4.1 4.4.2 4.4.3 4.4.4 4.4.5 4.4.6 4.4.7 5

5.1.1 5.1.2 5.1.3 5.2

5.2.1 5.2.2 5.2.3 5.3

5.3.1 5.3.2 5.3.3 6

Overall Results and Integrated Approach Proposal ......................................................................... 63

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The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-Critical Industries

1.1 ISSUES WITH DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT

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1.2 BARCODES AND ASSOCIATED TECHNOLOGY

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The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-Critical Industries

1.3 AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

1.4 PROJECT OUTLINE

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Preliminary project investigation

Appendix I Group analysis and discussion

Barcode applications brainstorm

Literature and technology review

WHAT Aims and objectives

The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-Critical Industries

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Individual analysis and discussion

WHY Current practices and issues

Barcode implementation guidelines

Metadata importance guidelines

F IGURE 1 F LOWCHART REPRESENTIN G PROJECT PROGRESSIO N

HOW Technology and data application

Proposed systems architecture

Proposed interface designs

Summary and development

Proposed deployment method

CONCLUSIONS Use of barcodes for document management in industry

The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-Critical Industries

1.5 REPORT CONTENTS AND STRUCTURE

1.5.1 SUMMARY OF LITERATURE REVIEW

1.5.2 SUMMARY OF TECHNOLOGY REVIEW

1.5.3 SUMMARY OF APPLICATION DEFINITION AND INVESTIGATION

1.5.4 SUMMARY OF APPLICATION METHOD DEVELOPMENT

1.5.5 SUMMARY OF OVERALL RESULTS AND INTEGRATED APPROACH PROPOSAL

1.5.6 SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS

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The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-Critical Industries

2.1 DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT IN ENGINEERING

2.2 DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE

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The Use of Barcodes for Document Management in Safety-Critical Industries