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Kodak Enters MIS With EMS

Kodak's Enterprise Management Solution runs at Mercury Print Production on a Dell PowerEdge 2600 server, similar to this one.

Kodak's newly acquired Creo unit takes on EFI and other print business management solutions offerings with a striking Aug. 1 announcement: It will demonstrate a complete business workflow solution for the graphic communications industry at Print 05. Now in beta testing at Mercury Printing, Rochester, NY; LaVigne, Inc., Wooster, MA; and an undisclosed Texas site, Kodak EMS provides a bit of closure for the Creo subsidiary, which fought EFI for control of the PrintCafe properties for which it had provided original seed money.

After EFI won control nearly two years ago, Creo promptly set about creating an alternative property. It spent the past year in intensive software development. Creo, now part of Kodak's Graphic Communications Group, moved quickly by licensing an application called Vantage — a comprehensive enterprise management solution that integrates manufacturing and business workflow, exactly the goal of EFI's offerings.

Creo has exclusive rights for Vantage within the graphic arts industries, for which it is being tailored. Irvine, CA-based Epicor, with 1,550 employees, sells enterprise management systems in vertical markets, with 6,000 users so far, 60% in the U.S. The Kodak version is scalable for firms with as few as five and as many as hundreds of users at one site or multiple plants. It will work with classic workflow products such as Prinergy, Synapse InSite, Preps and Upfront but is built on a Microsoft.net base that can be integrated into any system, and easily adapted by users — no need to go back to the developer for customization. It tracks work-in-process, mailing and fulfillment, product planning, purchasing, inventory maintenance, supplier interaction, customer service, order tracking, etc.

Kodak sees an advantage, it says, in starting with a clean slate because most print industry management systems (known as ERPs for Enterprise Resource Planning systems, or EMS, for Enterprise Management Solutions) began their lives as either accounting systems that added production and job management capabilities, or as production systems that added basic accounting capabilities via links to third-party accounting software.

"In many cases, the software architecture has limited ability to expand to keep pace," says Bob Kutschke, who, as general manager of the Business Workflow Product Group, quietly spearheaded the project with ex-Hagen honcho Bob Bierwagen. "Printers are now finding that these systems are becoming the bottleneck to their business."

One beta site said its automated prepress and CTP devices can produce a complete set of plates and proofs and have the job at the press before the CSRs can even have the job ticket created within their existing system. With digital presses, the situation is worse. Kodak EMS launches in North American markets by Q2-2006.
www.creo.com/EMS