OMR Software Speed

How much time does it take to evaluate OMR Sheets?

The time required to evaluate OMR sheets is divided into 4 parts

1. Time required for Scanning of OMR Sheets

2. Time required for Reading of OMR Bubble response data from the scanned image of OMR Sheet using the OMR software.

3. The time required to solve the issues created by candidates

4. Time required to generate and print reports.

Time required for scanning of OMR sheets

It purely depends on the speed of the scanner. If the scanner is fast you can scan more sheets in less time otherwise the time required for scanning would be quite much. As we have mentioned that our software is scanner independent, so the user is free to use any scanner. But if the user is using a Flatbed scanner and placing sheets, one-by-one for scanning, it will obviously take time. If someone is having a workload up to 30-50 sheets, then use of flatbed scanner is still good but flatbed scanner is not suited for higher quantities.

Generally all people who want to use OMR software prefer to use the Automatic Document Feeder or ADF Scanners. This helps to reduce the effort in scanning and the scanning time. ADF OMR Scanners have been scanning speeds ranging from 5 sheets/min to 150 sheets/min. For a regular institution operating in the range of 1000-5000 sheets, scanners with a speed range of 20-40 pages/min are optimally good.

Time required for reading of OMR Bubble responses

This is the actual step where the OMR software is involved and we are concerned with only this part of the process.

Observation and calculation of average speed of OMR sheet reading is based on certain obvious facts:

Obviously a sheet that has more number of reading blocks will need more reading time than a sheet with less number of OMR blocks. For example: a sheet with 300 questions will take slightly more time than a sheet with only 50 questions.

Also a sheet with more different types of blocks like Barcode, ICR, OCR etc. will take more time to read than a sheet with only OMR blocks.

Also a reading process with more number of user specific validations and verification steps will consume more time. For example: there can be many user specific conditions to check correctness of rollno, like length of rollno or range of roll no, or Valid Roll no., or partial filling alerts or multiple filling alerts etc.

There can be many such filter conditions that may not be required for all users, and accordingly time will vary as per user.

Though the software has many smart logics to correct an incorrect scanned image input, but obviously these internal logical image corrections consume process time, which might depend on the number of improperly scanned images in the lot.

Thus, we have benchmarked the reading speed of OMR, based on certain assumptions:

1. The sheet has only OMR blocks. The OMR blocks are 50 MCQ type questions with 4 options.
2. The sheet does not contain any additional ICR or Image or Barcode blocks.
3. The sheet is read on auto mode, it assumes data is to be read as it is and no user specific judgement to be taken. In the Auto mode the software does not stop for verification in case of issues. It simply rejects the sheets and moves forward to read the next one. The purpose of auto mode is to achieve maximum speed of reading.
4. The quality of scanned input is as per the stipulated guidelines.

The Standard version of the Addmen OMR Software, Quickly and accurately reads about 100 OMR Sheets per minute. It is possible to achieve very High speeds of 3 sheets/Sec on good configuration PC and 1 sheet/Sec on an average PC. The speed of OMR form reading is unaffected by the increasing number of OMR sheets to be read.

For High Speed reading and processing of High Volumes use Addmen Advanced OMR Software which can do parallel processing of several batches or folders of scanned images. There is also possibility of maximizing the computer resource utilization by running multiple instances or multiple licenses of the OMR Software on a single computer.

The professional variant of OMR software is able to maintain reading speeds of minimum 3 sheets/second or 200 sheets per minute for the same sheet image input. However with the application of speed enhancement features like Background mode+ Booster mode on the input images as per guidelines, it can deliver speeds in the range of 10000 Sheets/hr.

The time required to solve the issues created by candidates

The issues tagged during the auto mode reading are solved later in the alert mode. Real-time resolution of filling mistakes, likes: blank Roll nos.; duplicate Roll nos.; invalid Roll nos.; multiple bubbles filled in one column; blank test paper set; etc... This helps to save lots of time after reading and before the preparation of results.

Many software's claim high speed of reading, but later it takes a lot of time to solve these issues. In the Addmen software we can select all such skipped files with issue and the software automatically stops for each file with appropriate instruction so that it can be attended accordingly.

But the time consumed in this process of issue resolution is out of the scope of the speed of software because the major time consumed is in human responses. If the human operator takes 2 seconds or 10 seconds to respond with the correct value when alerted by the software will decide the time required for the resolution of issues identified by the software during the reading.

Also the overall time killed in the issue solving process obviously depends on the number of issues encountered. The issues are less with qualified or experienced candidates applying for higher study or job selection examination. But the number of issues is more if the candidates appearing in the test are from junior classes or not a very literate group of applicants.

Continue Reading about Prompt and Resolution of reading Issues in Addmen OMR Software

The time required to generate reports and declare the results

Results are calculated in continuity of OMR optical reading process. There is no separate process and not much extra time required to calculate and generate reports.

Though, the Addmen OMR Software delivers almost all output in ready to use report formats but each type of report has a different calculation process and the output time may vary also according to the processing ability of user's computer.

Also sometimes, if any specific report presentations are required, then it might take some more time for the user to alter the output obtained in Excel to derive the required format. For this reason, the time consumed in this report generation step is also out of the scope to consider for OMR software speed.