The power of optical character recognition

He says that OCR at the gate, especially when combined with the proper pre-notification tools to provide the terminal with information before to the truck’s arrival can provide substantial gains in gate velocity and accuracy, “where it makes operational and financial sense for the operator”.

And that is not always the case, as John Lund, sales manager of Finland’s Visy,points out.

“One of the technologies we have in-house is OCR. At the port it is typically used for licence plate recognition and cars and it can also be used in container number recognition. The use of OCR really depends on whether in the port these vehicles or containers need to be identified.

“We typically use OCR and RFID at many of the important installations. The feeling in the industry is that the two technologies are competing with each other – but we find they are complementary.

“We find one location can be more suitable for one technology and another location more suitable for the other. It is understanding the customer’s business and finding the best solution.”

RFID tagging might be appropriate where the same trucks are going in and out of the port every day – for example, if a particular driver or trucking line uses the port all the time.

“But in a situation where the trucks constantly change and you just want to enter the licence plate number for access control, instead of switching the RFID tag from driver to truck to truck, then it is better to use licence plate recognition with OCR.”