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Description  |
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The invention relates to a method of personalizing identification cards in
which laminated, user-neutral, i.e. blank identification cards provided
with at least one repeatedly recordable storage medium are provided with
data, and part of the data are arranged on the identification card so as
to be overwritable and another part so as not to be overwritable.
The German application No. 28 54 862 already discloses a method of
producing and personalizing identification cards in which the copies
joined on continuous sheets are written on in a high-speed printer to
personalize the card blanks. This writing is carried out by using a data
record containing all required information about the user. The next
production step involves cutting the written-on continuous sheet or
Leporello into single sheets, laminating them between two transparent
films and providing them with magnetic stripes. The single cards are then
punched out and further data of the data record assigned to the card are
inscribed in the magnetic strip.
During the various production steps the production must constantly be
checked for rejects. Eliminated identification cards or partially
fabricated cards require subsequent production and thus a repetition of
all the procedural steps that have already been performed. The method
involves considerable time and a high reject rate, since in case of error
all preceding procedural steps must be repeated every time with reference
to the data record. During the entire processing period of a card the data
record must be kept accessible, which requires correspondingly great
technical effort for multiple access to the data of all identification
cards.
A further disadvantage is that in practice the various processing steps are
carried out in different processing areas, i.e. in the computing center of
a bank, on the one hand, and by the identification card producer, on the
other, which necessitates troublesome repeated transport of partially
fabricated products.
The data necessary for the personalization of identification cards are
generally obtained from a magnetic tape (production tape) which is
produced by the institutions that issue identification cards. To
facilitate the delivery of the identification cards to the card users, the
issuing agencies are requested to supply the identification card arranged
in an order so as to correspond to the data record on the production tape.
In case a card must be eliminated in one of the procedural steps, the
order of the identification cards produced in the stack of cards no longer
corresponds to the order of the data records on the production tape. The
card subsequently completed crops up in another place and must be sorted
into its proper place in the identification card series by hand. This
resorting is very labour-intensive and thus expensive.
It is also known already to personalize identification cards by impressing
part of the data as a relief into the material of the identification card.
These cards are also equipped with a magnetic strip which is then written
on after the irreversible impression of the card. The known method also
has the disadvantage that an error in writing the magnetic strip data
requires the elimination of that particular card, which increases the
number of rejects and confuses the order of the produced cards. In this
case the repetition of all operational steps is necessary to produce new
cards, for which purpose the entire data record of the particular card
must be made available subsequently, thus causing considerable trouble,
especially in the organization of the data.
The German application No. 29 07 004 already discloses a personalization
method for identification cards in which part of the data are written by
means of a laser beam recorder directly onto or into the laminated,
user-neutral card. These cards also have a magnetic stripe which also
contains certain data. During production, part of the data are first
inscribed irreversibly into the card by the laser recorder and then the
magnetic stripe is written on. In spite of the processing speed which is
considerably higher than earlier methods, this method still has the
disadvantage that an erroneous application of data on the magnetic strip
necessitates completely new production of the identification card, which
also leads to a relatively high reject rate, on the one hand, and prevents
the original order of the completed cards from being maintained, on the
other.
To sum up it can be said that in all known methods the irreversible data
are first applied to the identification card and the reversible data are
only applied at the end. This order is presumably due historically to the
fact that writing on the card blanks used to be possible before lamination
and the application of the magnetic stripe data was only possible after
lamination. Although this order is no longer necessary in newer methods
such as the application of data by means of a laser beam recorder or the
impression of the identification cards, the above-mentioned sequence has
been retained unchanged in all these cases. When an error occurs, i.e. a
reject is produced, in any one of the operational steps of this sequence,
all operational steps must be repeated to produce a new card. For this
purpose the complete data record must subsequently be made available
again. The effort in organizing the data could be kept at a minimum if
only one identification card at a time were processed. The economically
more favorable solution, that is, simultaneous processing of several
cards, must, however, be paid for with great expenditures with respect to
storage capacity and data organization. A fully automatic production of
the cards according to the order on the magnetic strip, however, cannot be
attained even with unlimited expenditures. The reject rate is also a very
important disadvantage as far as card material costs are concerned in mass
production, as is the case with this type of identification card.
The object of the invention consists in providing, for the personalization
of identification cards with irreversible, i.e. non-overwritable, data and
reversible, i.e. overwritable, data, a method which yields to mass
production with a low reject rate and makes the cards available in a stack
in accordance with the data records on the production tape.
For this purpose use is made of the finding that, as opposed to usual
practice, the identification card is first written on with the reversible,
i.e. overwritable, data of the data record assigned to that particular
card. The card only arrives at the next stage and is written on with the
non-overwritable, i.e. irreversible, data when the first step has been
successfully completed. Experience has shown that hardly any errors occur
in this second step, when a laser recorder is employed, whereas the error
rate is relatively high when magnetic stripes, for example, are written
on. The defective cards are eliminated from the process after being
checked and are inserted again if the error was merely due to
contamination. This is readily done as the card is designed so as to be
user-neutral and up to then had only been written on with reversible, i.e.
erasable, data.
It has been shown that the method according to the invention allows for a
considerable decrease in the reject rate. As an employable identification
card is produced for every data record, even in the case of "wrong
storage," by the method according to the invention, the identification
cards necessarily come out in the desired order, which makes
time-consuming manual resorting superfluous.
In an advantageous development of the invention the complete data record
assigned to a particular card is made available in an initial memory which
is independent of the data bank of a central computer (e.g. magnetic tape
storage). When the first procedural step, i.e. the inscription of the
overwritable data into the magnetic strip of an identification card, has
been successfully completed, the data record is "pushed on" into a second
memory, whereby the part of the data record with the overwritable data is
erased and at the same time the first memory is loaded with a new data
record which is assigned to the following card. Thus the access period to
the data bank of a central computer is limited to a minimum, although the
data record is available for the entire duration of the relevant
procedural steps. The processing speed can be considerably increased by
this measure, as the magnetic strip of a new identification card can be
written on while the old card is having the non-overwritable data written
on, for example, by means of a laser beam recorder. In each phase, access
to the appropriate data is ensured.
The advantages of the method according to the invention mainly consist in
the fact that defective identification cards, e.g. ones merely having
soiled magnetic stripes, which can basically be reused after being
properly cleaned, can be fed into the system again and be written over
with other data before they are written on with unerasable data. As most
magnetic stripe writing errors are due to eliminable defects such as
contamination, the reject rate can be reduced to a minimum.
Error detection in the first writing phase with machine-readable, invisible
and erasable data can be carried out completely automatically, resulting
in uninterrupted, serial issuing of the identification cards by the
appropriate device, without any manual intervention or finishing being
necessary.
As opposed to some known methods, the production rejects in the method
according to the invention do not also put a burden on the units in which
the cards are written on. The method according to the invention can also
be carried out localized in one and the same place.
The method according to the invention can be used for all identification
cards having a data carrier in which data can be written over, i.e.
recorded reversibly. Such data carriers are, for example, magnetic stripes
or integrated circuits that can be programmed with the relevant
information.
The non-overwritable, i.e. irreversible, data can also be applied to the
identification card in any way one pleases. It has, however, proved to be
particularly advantageous to write on the identification cards with a
laser beam recorder due to the high processing speed, the high degree of
protection against forgery and falsification and attendant great
flexibility.
To additionally protect the identification cards, the unit for writing the
overwritable data on the cards can be preceded by a unit which reads a
certain card-specific feature, a so-called "unique feature", off the card
and jumbles it by an algorithm with the data record assigned to the card.
This type of feature can be represented, for example, by randomly
distributed magnetic areas in the card.
The unique feature can also be inscribed in the identification card as a
separate code number in addition to the overwritable data. The result of
the jumbling can also be interwoven with the overwritable data record. For
this purpose a partial reproduction of the arithmetical result in addition
to the overwritable data is also possible. When the card is used later,
the arithmetical result is verified again in an evaluating device and the
presence of data manipulation or the assignment of the magnetic stripe to
a particular identification card is checked in this way.
In the following, an embodiment of the invention is described by way of
example on the basis of the attached drawings. These show:
FIG. 1 schematic block diagram of a device for carrying out the method, and
FIG. 2 a functional diagram of the device of FIG. 1.
As shown in FIG. 1, the laminated, user-neutral, i.e. blank identification
cards are fed in a stack 12 to the device 10, which, however, is shown
schematically in FIG. 1 with respect to its functional units. Block 14
indicates the first unit for reading and further processing a
card-specific feature; block 16 indicates the first writing and reading
unit, also called "test unit" in the following, in which the storage media
of the cards are provided with overwritable, i.e. reversible, data and the
inscribed data are checked. Block 18 indicates the second writing unit, in
which the cards are written on with non-overwritable, i.e. irreverisible,
data. Block 20 is the first memory, the capacity of which is such that it
embraces the complete data record assigned to a particular card, and block
22 shows the second memory, which can be smaller than the memory 20 and is
only loaded with the part of the data record which concerns the visual
part of the data, i.e. the data which are written on the identification
card non-overwritably or irreversibly. The connection with the data bank
of the central computer takes place via the symbolically shown magnetic
tape storage (production tape) 24.
For identification cards having a magnetic strip, two magnetic heads 26,28
are provided in the unit 16 for inscribing or reading the magnetic
information. The magnetic heads and the circuit electronics necessary for
signal-processing are of orthodox design and need not be described in more
detail in this connection.
Unit 18 contains a known laser beam recorder with which information can be
written directly onto the identification cards so as to be humanly
readable, as is described in the German application No. 29 07 004. When
the identification card is designed appropriately, this writing can be
carried out directly onto the laminated inlay of the card through a
transparent cover film. The reference number 32 refers to the central
processing unit of the device 10, which contains among other things a
comparator for the data of the two magnetic heads 26 and 28, and a control
unit for the entire device.
The number 34 refers to the stack of personalized identification cards. The
cards are present in the order of the data records of the production tape
24.
The unit 14 is not absolutely necessary, and is provided only when the
magnetic stripe is to be protected additionally by taking a card-specific
feature into consideration. The unit 14 has a unit 36 in which the
card-specific feature read off the card by the sensor 38 is jumbled by an
algorithm with the data record or part of the data record of that
particular card. The unit 36 is connected with the central unit 32 for
this purpose. The immediate jumbling of the card-specific data in the unit
36, instead of in the central unit 32, has the advantage that the
algorithm which must necessarily be kept secret, with which the
card-specific feature is linked to the data, can be withheld from the
access of the operating personnel to a large extent. The unit 36 and the
sensor 38 are designed in such a way that unauthorized access is
practically impossible. This can be achieved, for example, by a compact
construction and casting with a special casting mass.
The mode of operation of the device, or the sequence of the various
procedural steps, shall now be explained on the basis of FIG. 2. First the
complete data record for an identification card is read into the first
memory 20 from the production tape 24. Then a user-neutral identification
card is drawn into the device by an appropriately designed isolating
device. This card contains a card-specific feature, if desired, but not
yet any personal information whatsoever. The card has been laminated and
can exhibit bank-related data, if desired.
The data record consists of the visually recognizable data which can no
longer be changed after inscription into the card, for example, name,
address and photo of the lawful owner, account number, bank code number,
company name, identification card number, etc. The second part of the data
record which can be erased any time after inscription into the card,
embraces the reversible and overwritable data, for example, a certain
credit institution, a currency code and all humanly readable data, in a
machine-readable form as well.
After the card has been drawn into the unit 14, the card-specific
information is read and jumbled in the unit 36 by a secret algorithm with
the data record. The result is fed to the central unit 32.
Then the card runs by means of a transport device not shown into the unit
16, where all machine-readable data, i.e. the data that can be erased and
written over any time, are recorded on the magnetic track with the
magnetic head 26, taking the card-specific information into consideration.
During further transport these data are read by the magnetic head 28 and
their correspondence with the data record is checked in the central unit
32. If they do correspond, the card runs on into the unit 18, where the
humanly readable part of the data record is written onto the card by means
of the laser beam recorder 30. During further transport of the card from
the unit 16 to the unit 18, the data record is pushed from the memory 20
to the memory 22, whereby only the part of the data record which is
necessary for the unit 18 is retained. The machine-readable part of the
current data record is erased in the process. At the same time the data
record of the following card "n+1" is read into the memory 20 from the
production tape 24. The device, or rather the relevant memories, are only
connected with the central computer as long as they are being loaded;
during the entire processing period of the cards the device memories are
separate from the actual data bank, which can perform other tasks during
this time.
If the checking of the cards in the unit 16 reveals that the data of a card
have not been inscribed in the intended form, this faulty card is
withdrawn and a newly introduced neutral card is written on again with the
same data, etc. The withdrawn cards can possibly be introduced again into
the stack 12 after being cleaned and be written over with the data that
are present for another card. As more than half of all writing errors on
the magnetic stripe are due to contamination, the rejects can be
considerably reduced in this way.
The recycling of defective cards back to the beginning is shown in FIG. 1
by broken lines.
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