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Derek
Derek

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Automate Unstructured Document Parsing & Entry in Manufacturing

For more details, you can refer to the original article on Document Parsing for manufacturing.

In the manufacturing industry, handling a large volume of documents, especially unstructured ones, is a common challenge. These documents often come in formats like Word or PDF and contain various product categories and parameters. Manually extracting and organizing this information into structured formats like Excel can be time-consuming and error-prone. This is where intelligent document processing (IDP) solutions come into play, significantly enhancing efficiency and accuracy.

Current Challenges in Manufacturing

Manufacturers frequently deal with a plethora of unstructured documents. For instance, a smart meter manufacturer might receive numerous technical bid documents during the tendering process. These documents, often in Word or PDF formats, contain diverse product specifications and parameters. Extracting specific parameters and compiling them into a technical specification sheet typically requires manual effort, which is not only labor-intensive but also prone to errors.
Given the diversity of product specifications and the scattered nature of parameter data across various tables, leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to accurately extract and match relevant data can save substantial time and effort. This automated approach can generate technical specification sheets efficiently.

Intelligent Document Solutions

AI Document Parsing:
In unstructured documents, approximately 70% of the key information is table data, while the remaining 30% is dispersed in paragraph text. Although table data is relatively standardized, the order of fields and column names may vary. The structured parameter documents are based on fixed templates but have multiple versions, primarily differing in column names.

To address these documents, our development team first performs layout analysis on the imported Word and PDF files. ComIDP's intelligent document parsing technology supports over 24 data tags, enabling high-precision parsing of text, tables, images, headers, footers, directories, formulas, and code. This ensures that the parsed data remains consistent with the original document.

ComIDP parses the text and tables in the documents based on the document type and customer requirements. It also parses the Excel parameter templates that need to be filled, iterates through the list data, and extracts parameter information for each row, laying the foundation for subsequent data entry.

Intelligent Document Recognition and Extraction:

Building on intelligent document parsing, ComIDP employs advanced AI OCR technology to accurately recognize and extract text information organized in paragraphs from technical documents.

Additionally, our proprietary table recognition technology efficiently handles various complex tables, including those without borders and with merged cells. ComIDP's intelligent table extraction achieves an accuracy rate of over 85% when converting to structured Excel or JSON formats, ensuring high-precision extraction and structured conversion of document content to meet customer data quality and efficiency requirements.

By integrating intelligent recognition, parsing, and extraction technologies, we have developed an efficient, automated document processing workflow that significantly enhances operational efficiency. This intelligent document processing solution helps manufacturers achieve more efficient and smarter operations.

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