What we do - Technologies

DRS designs and manufactures its own range of (OMR) Optical Mark Recognition, (ICR) Intelligent Character Recognition and imaging readers that can all be easily integrated into any organisation’s IT infrastructure. 

Census

Our experience of successfully delivering over 15 national population census projects using our OMR, ICR and imaging technologies and solutions has earned us a global reputation as a leader in this field. 

e-Marker®

Our highly configurable modular and scalable e-Marker® solution brings improvements in both marking quality and the ability for awarding and assessment bodies to improve the marking progress.  Designed to add value, reduce time to collect results and improve accuracy and reliability of examination marking, e-Marker® harnesses the power of our own realtime, award-winning image-capture readers, specialist bureau services and sophisticated software delivered across the internet, to securely capture item-level responses and marks from examiners.

PhotoScribe® PS900 Series Imaging Readers

Our flagship PhotoScribe® PS900 series of OMR, ICR and imaging readers offer full duplex bitonal or greyscale image-capture and can process forms up to 18” in length.  They set new standards in data-and image-processing innovation and have been used around the world to process complex and time-critical exercises.  These robust, real-time data-processing readers lie at the very core of our examination, election and census work and won the prestigious 2008 DM Hardware Product of the Year and 2009 DM Product of the Year Awards.

CD230

The CD230 hand-fed Optical Mark Reader is designed for low-volume form processing and predominantly used by a large proportion of UK schools processing paper-based attendance and assessment information.  Marks are made on specially designed DRS stock forms, scanned on the CD230 and the data is automatically captured into the school Management Information System.

Specialist Forms

Our specialist Forms Design and Print Division produces hundreds of millions of forms designed for purpose every year.  From school assessment stock forms, to highly complex election forms and multi-page census booklets designed for real-time recognition and processing, our skills in managing large-volume work in short timescales whilst maintaining exceptional levels of quality are unrivalled.  The Print Division is one of the cornerstones of our complete service.

Bureau Service

Our secure Bureau Division is equipped with our own award winning imaging readers.  Used as an integral element to our complete bureau service for examination, survey, questionnaire and data-processing projects, our technologies and specialist project management teams are expert at establishing the aims of a customer project and managing the logistics to ensure accurate and timely results.  Services include mail-out, fulfillment, document-indexing, document scanning, web imaging and retrieval and guidance on imaging, recognition and validation techniques.  The bureau is equipped to run 24 hours a day to satisfy our customers’ requirements.

e-Marker® in action with AQA

Working with the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance, DRS has developed marking solutions ideal for different subject matter and different types of examination questions.  Through DRS’ work with awarding bodies, e-Marker® has become a world-leading product which can be used in examination processes all over the globe.  It was launched four years ago and has grown to contribute a significant amount to DRS’ revenue.