New Salvos Fired in War on Paper : New Devices Cope With ‘Blizzard’ From Computers

A decade ago, when former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. was griping about the state’s “paper blizzard,” it was commonly assumed that technology would someday make routine office paper work as obsolete as manual typewriters.

But, alas, it was not to be.

The electronic wizardry that was supposed to have the nation communicating almost exclusively by computers and telephones has become, instead, just another way to create more, and prettier, paper. And things are only getting worse. This year’s hottest high-tech marvel, the analysts say, is the desk-top laser printer, a powerful device that can turn any personal computer operator into a high-volume publisher.

“The paperless office is an idea whose time has thoroughly passed,” says Will Zachman, an analyst with International Data Corp. in Framingham, Mass. “It will be decades before we see any serious developments to get rid of paper.”

Although the war on paper has probably been lost for this century, the fight has not been abandoned entirely. But rather than trying to replace paper, business equipment makers competing in the $3-billion document storage market are developing fancy computerized machines that ease the headaches of keeping--and retrieving--paper or its likeness.

The latest high-tech devices range from something as simple, and inexpensive, as Minolta’s $25,000 electronic film processor, viewer and printer to FileNet Corp.’s $500,000, computerized, optical laser disk system, the current Cadillac of the industry.

Introduced in late 1984, the FileNet device allows a business to copy up to 20 pages per minute onto an optical disk and to display the images, just minutes later, on any computer terminal connected to the disk. Ted Smith, president of the Costa Mesa-based company estimates that a single system can hold the images of 2.5 million pieces of paper, the equivalent of 266 four-drawer file cabinets.

What to do with an office’s paper work is no small problem for the business world. For example, storing a four-drawer file cabinet in a high-rent urban office building can cost as much as $300 a year, according to Bekins Records Management Co., a Los Angeles firm that leases low-cost storage space to the country’s biggest paper savers. Still others have estimated the federal government’s file storage costs at more than $300 million per year.

Difficult to Find

And even though documents are retained, it doesn’t mean that they are easy to find. A company can literally spend days trying to retrieve a customer’s file from its archives. And if the file is languishing on some desk, the search can stretch on, causing, at the very least, an annoying wait for the customer as well as the office worker.

Furthermore, new documents, particularly legal, government and financial papers, are often taken out of circulation for days--or even weeks--for duplication and indexing.

“When you have lots of paper and no resources to index it or get back at it again, you might as well throw it away,” says Jerry Walters, vice president and self-described chief scientist at Integrated Automation in Alameda, a manufacturer of custom-designed optical disk storage systems.

Advanced Slowly

Until the advent of the microprocessor in the late 1970s--the same circuitry that powers personal computers--document storage technology had not gone much beyond its infancy nearly 50 years ago when a New York bank with the aid of Eastman Kodak, started the microfilm industry.

Dubbed “shrink and store,” microfilming reduces an ordinary sheet of paper to a square of film about the size of a fingerprint. The technology proved quite useful during World War II, when incoming and outgoing “Victory Mail” to the European battlefronts was microfilmed and, then, reproduced to save on transportation costs.

But as any public library patron or visitor to a county clerk’s office can testify, microfilm and microfiche have not been particularly user friendly. Finding the right reel of microfilm or the correct microfiche card is often just the beginning of a series of fumblings to insert the film in the viewer, adjust the lens and then read the document. Attempting to reprint a document can unleash a whole new set of frustrations.

The document storage business, says one executive only half-jokingly, used to operate by the “three F’s: film it, file it and forget it.” And the goal of all the new electronic technology, he adds, is helping users “find it” as well.

“The original purpose of microfilm was to photograph something and put it away. And later they started to wonder why they shouldn’t be able to get back at those documents,” explains David Colson, who distributes Minolta microfilm systems throughout Southern California.

Microfilm Still Dominant

Despite its relatively old age, analysts say microfilm still accounts for 90% of the industry’s annual sales, an understandable statistic given its cost advantage over other methods. Industry insiders estimate that a single sheet of paper costs less than a tenth of a penny to reduce to a frame of film, about 10 cents to etch on an optical disk and nearly $1 to copy onto a computer’s magnetic disk or tape.

However, until the latest advances, about the only technological improvements made in microfilming were the number of pages that could be squeezed on a single roll of film--about 3,000 in the V-Mail days versus 15,000 today--and the speed of the filming which today can reach an astounding 240 pages per minute.

The addition of electronics is rapidly changing all that.

For example, a “Computer Aided Retrieval” system, as it’s known in the industry, allows users to type on a keyboard the title of the document, or subject matter, they want to peruse. The computer then scans the index and depending on the sophistication of the system, either automatically loads the roll of film into the viewer or tells the user which roll of film to load in for himself. Most systems, which range in price from $100,000 to $500,000, then locate the requested document and display it on the viewing screen.

Companies are also increasingly turning to “Computer Output Microform” systems to automatically create film images of computer files. The devices, which typically hook onto a large mainframe computer, allow companies to bypass entirely the process of printing out a document and then photographing it.

Expect Sales Boom

“The market for these is very strong,” says Paul Artlip Jr., director of marketing for Eastman Kodak’s image management unit. “And it’s not going to fade.” Indeed, analysts are predicting that sales of micrographic equipment and supplies could more than double by 1990 to $5.2 billion from $2.5 billion last year.

Computers are also helping engineers, military contractors, builders and architects keep track of oversized blueprints. As in traditional microfilming, such drawings are reduced to a frame of film the size of a thumb print. However, to aid storage and reproduction, these film squares are inserted into the centers of IBM-style computer file cards, called “aperture cards.”

The Pentagon, for example, literally has millions of these cards containing the specifications of each of its weapons, items of clothing and other supplies it asks outside contractors to manufacture. According to one contractor, it takes six cards to detail the specifications of a pair of regulation Army boots and 600,000 cards to handle the F-16 fighter jet.

Not surprisingly, aperture card filing systems have attracted the eye of the high-tech minded. Infodetics Corp. in Anaheim is one of a handful of companies with a computerized card retrieval system similar to those used with microfilm reels. The Infodetics product, which houses up to 6.4 million cards, allows a user to order a particular card and see it displayed on a computer terminal screen. With a few other electronic commands, the user can order a copy of the aperture card or a paper printout of its contents.

“There’s a captive market,” Infodetics Vice President Dan Cota says of government’s and military contractors’ reliance on aperture cards. “Film isn’t going away because it’s still the least expensive way to store information.”

Using Optical Disks

Nevertheless, companies, including Infodetics, are increasingly turning to optical disks, the latest and slickest method of storing and retrieving documents that were once housed on paper.

Although sales of these devices totaled about $200 million last year, analysts project that by 1990 sales in this fastest-growing market segment could reach $2 billion and account for nearly one-quarter of all sales of document storage and retrieval systems.

The reason for the surging popularity of optical systems is ease of use--not cost, which can range up to several million dollars for sophisticated, custom-designed devices.

But for the price, says one Citicorp technical executive, customers are treated to luxury-style service.

For example, most optical systems allow users immediate access to the documents they have copied and stored, rather that having to wait days while the papers are filmed, indexed and filed.

In addition, optical systems let a document be viewed simultaneously by as many people who want it, a feature that eliminates waiting until a file is returned.

“There’s no information bottleneck and there’s no wondering where a file is when a customer calls,” says the Citicorp official who is considering the purchase of several systems for various Citicorp operations. “And there’s no lost time or lost files.”

Optical disk systems have caught on quickly with financial institutions because of the volume of paper they process every day.

S&Ls;, Banks Use System

One of FileNet’s early customers was Home Savings of America in Los Angeles, which bought the system to help it keep track of 230,000 individual retirement accounts. Another is Great Western Savings & Loan, which uses the system to handle mortgage loan applications. Security Pacific National Bank is using the system in its international money transfer department, the unit that handles all letters of credit for the bank’s customers.

Robert Minnich, Security Pacific’s vice president for image management, says the international money transfer department has increased its productivity by as much as 40% since the optical system was installed six months ago.

Although large financial institutions have an easier time justifying the cost of a system that starts at about $500,000, analysts project that increased competition in the emerging market, particularly from the Japanese, will lead to lower prices in the near future.

“Optical is still in its infancy,” says Kodak’s Artlip. “My feeling is that it will come into its own this year.”

Still, few are predicting that optical disks will replace either film or paper entirely. Film, analysts says, will still be the preferred method of storing inactive files and documents that require little or no additional work and will be retrieved only sporadically. Optical disks, on the other hand, might be used to store active documents and files that will be reviewed frequently.

And what about hapless, low-tech paper?

“It will always be with us,” says Phil Trapp, chief executive of Cygnet Systems, a disk system maker in Sunnyvale. “You can reduce the cost of dealing with paper and you can reduce the cost of the flow of information with high-tech devices, but you’ll never replace paper.”