Air Force recruits imaging as KM component

Tinker Air Force Base (Oklahoma City) is calling on TMSSequoia to develop an imaging component of its overall knowledge management initiative to more efficiently manage aircraft production and maintenance projects. TMSSequoia is developing an intelligent automated data extraction process to capture and remove information from scanned images of legacy engineering drawings. The government-funded $700,000 process includes enhancement and clean-up of images, location of text data from title blocks, parts lists, notes and revision information, and character recognition to capture data, and identification of text data content. TMSSequoia will also provide a validation method for verifying data and applying index identifiers, and passing the required information to a Metaphase product document management (PDM) system. Tinker plans to run over five million drawings through the system, which will run on Tinker's existing hardware infrastructure. "The tool set they are developing will automate our meta data capture processes for our PDM systems," said Ed Kincaid, coordinator of design and drafting technology for the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Command. "All of DoD will benefit from this effort."