Print 05 Passion & JDF Action
If the
printing industry can be said to have a national convention, it must be Print
05.
This
issue of Graphic Arts Monthly greets subscribers just as the doors have opened
on PRINT 05 & CONVERTING 05 at
Though the printing industry cannot be said to have an "industry
convention," in fact, Print 05 (and the Graph Expo shows) fulfill that
purpose. Standards groups, educators, analysts, and print associations
congregate concurrently with PRINT: from the Waterless Printing Assn., to
Seybold Seminars, from NPES standards bodies to PrintImage's Owners Conference,
the NAPL Soderstrom Society gala, to the PIA/GATF Premier Print Awards banquets
honoring the 2005 winners of the coveted Benny, to the RIT Cary Award, the PGSF
Educator of the Year Award, etc. Exhibitors will woo customers at a range of gatherings,
staging large-scale parties and intimate dining.
|
800 Exhibitors in 800 Minutes |
|
Seasoned visitors to
Graph Expo and PRINT have some established aids that help them cut to the
chase in "doing" the show: all 750,000 sq.ft. of it. Technical
advances at Graphic Arts Show Co., sponsors of Print 05 & Converting 05,
have made this certainly the most wired PRINT show ever. |
Perhaps it was heavenly intervention, as the Rolling Stones' Bigger Bang
concert takes place at
With that as backdrop, the serious business of exploration and examination
of printing, converting, mailing, and wide-format technologies is the real
business of Print 05. And the tenor of technological change revolves around the
recurring theme: integrating and automating the print factory.
To that end, James Harvey helpfully provides readers with a preview of PRINT
through the eyes of the CIP4 Committee. Following his synopsis are a
representative sampling of bulletins on Print 05 plans that have arrived
subsequent to the past three issue reports in Graphic Arts Monthly.
JDF for the Rest of Us
When print professionals hear terms like "JDF" or "CIM,"
the first thing that may come to mind is a vendor's advertisement, a product
presentation or an article in a trade magazine that attempted to explain what
these terms mean. For many it's very ethereal: an industry thing, something
that they'll get around to — one day.
But beyond the hearsay about JDF technology being "not ready for prime
time," print professionals want to know where they should begin. Where's
the biggest bang for the buck; what product should I look at?
The answer remains that evanescent "it depends," and that isn't
necessarily very helpful. Sure, you can sketch a "typical workflow"
at the highest level of abstraction. But in real life, just about every
printer, prepress service or publisher has a different workflow, combination of
equipment, customer mix, and so forth; so of course, "it depends."
Although many of the advertised benefits of the Job Definition Format (JDF)
and process automation seem to require big, cumbersome, enterprise-wide
programs, in truth you're best off starting with a specific area where you
think a little automation will give you that edge you are looking for.
|
|
Take, for instance, Lavigne Inc.,
But then, Lavigne used JDF to connect
Printable's
You
might say to yourself, "That's nice, but they could have done that without
JDF," and you'd be right. You can probably get any two vendors together to
work out integration issues with or without a standard. But the problem becomes
more difficult as the number of vendors you add to the mix increases,
particularly when you start crossing departments.
Take Williamson Printing of Dallas, for instance. Williamson was looking for
ways to make their bottom-line more attractive: aren't we all! They identified
two areas where manual operations added time to production: imposition and
cutter set-up. There's a leap — from prepress to postpress — what do these
operations have in common? In imposition, Williamson was taking 15-30 minutes
per job to manually make impositions, plus customer service representatives
were often waiting 15 minutes just to take their turn at the imposition
workstation. In the bindery, it was taking 25 to 30 minutes to set up cutters
for each job.
|
|
Williamson had been using the Esko-Graphics Scope workflow system (Booth
7233) in prepress and recently acquired a PRISM MIS system (Booth 6521.) They
also selected Creo's (now Kodak Graphic Communications Group: Booths 7507 and
6707 ) UpFront Version 3.1, which customer service representatives use to enter
job data.
A JDF file is created in UpFront and exported to the Scope workflow, which
uses that data to automatically generate an imposition layout. The pages are
entered into the page list of the imposition in prepress, as that information
is typically not available at the moment of the calculation of the imposition
in Upfront.
Whereas imposition previously took three steps (which would have to be
repeated every time there was a change in the job), now the CSRs no longer
create impositions by hand, and prepress operators no longer have to re-enter
information manually in Scope.
|
|
Williamson sees 85% of its jobs run through the new workflow, and the
results are pretty impressive. The prepress operator time to recreate an
imposition has been reduced by 95% per job; the number of errors in prepress
has been reduced by 100% (in other words, zero errors); and job latency has
been reduced by one hour. Jobs are no longer waiting hours before the
imposition gets done: it's instantaneous. If that isn't enough, Williamson had
cutters already capable of automated setup via JDF, and now imposition data is
also sent to
Williamson plans on next automating the generation of soft proofs via JDF
and one day they hope to automate the entire company, from accounting software
to press to shipping (and receiving). Without JDF, such ambitions would only be
pipe dreams for all but the largest printing houses; even then the complexity
of proprietary integration would drive even the brightest IT manager mad!
There's no need to skip over the pressroom either; in fact, the connection
between prepress and the pressroom is one of the most common places to start
for printers. Automating ink key pre-settings using the older CIP3 Printing
Production Format (PPF) or JDF is low-hanging fruit: if you haven't done so
yet, what are you waiting for? (Note: PPF is mapped to JDF and JDF can perform
all of the functions of PPF, so systems that use PPF can be fully integrated
into a JDF environment.) But there's more to automating the pressroom than just
ink key pre-setting.
One notable example comes from German printer Kraft Druck und Verlag GmbH.
It upgraded its Hiflex MIS software (Booth 8121) so that they could provide
customers with historic information on closed jobs using any standard Internet
browser. As far back as 2003 Kraft Druck und Verlag also upgraded or replaced
several systems:
- Creo Prinergy PDF Workflow replaced an older Brisque
workflow system.
- A fully-automatic Lotum 800 Quantum thermal platesetter
replaced an earlier model.
- Three MAN Roland 700s (Booth 1245) sheetfeds were
updated to PECOM.
"These upgrades were not coincidental," said Kraft Druck and
Verlag GM Werner Kraft. "We were searching for seamless, cross-vendor
communication between the Hiflex MIS and the production systems in the prepress
and the press department. Our aim was to improve customer services by
organizing operations more efficiently and making the production process more
transparent and flexible."
|
|
The resulting implementation used JDF (Job Definition Format) and JMF (Job
Messaging Format) to create the interconnection between the Hiflex MIS and the
Creo Prinergy Workflow System, as well as between the Hiflex MIS and the PECOM
System of the MAN Roland sheet-ed offset presses. Hiflex uses the JDF interface
to create customer details and printing instructions and data only needs to be
entered once. The system automatically generates the complete production
sequence, and the job information is ready to be passed on to the subsequent
Creo and MAN Roland systems.
The direct effect of the JDF connectivity project was an increase in
productive hours (print run hours) in the first period of +9.6% (2004 compared
to 2003). In prepress alone, Kraft Druck und Verlag estimates that it saves 24
minutes per day in job creation. Their ROI is 446.5% within five years (which
means that the investment is paid back 5.46 times).
So when the boss asks you to sharpen your pencil and get that 2006 budget in
order, consider how you can automate processes that are labor intensive,
involve re-keying data or are highly repetitive. Know that by specifying only
JDF-enabled new equipment and upgrades, you can buy with confidence that new
equipment will work with future automation projects and a quick ROI will add
some greenbacks to that net profit line, and perhaps add a few dollars to the
year-end bonus pool.
Print 05 is the perfect place to get started. Grab a JDF Roadmap from the
distribution bins at each Print 05 entrance to quickly find exhibitors with
JDF-enabled products. Detailed case studies are now available on the CIP4 Web
site (www.cip4.org,
see the CIPPI awards and the document archive), from your vendors, and from
groups such as NGP (www.ngppartners.org).
Also, download the JDF Marketplace, (free of charge) from www.cip4.org for a listing of
JDF-enabled products and services that are available today. Stop by CIP4's
Booth 6002 if you have any questions. — Jim
Harvey
|
|
In addition to JDF-enabled technologies, there are a number of major
development trends in evidence at the show. Some of these key developments are
summarized in the Must See 'ems selections of significant technology threads.
This year's key categories, announced on the eve of the show by the Graphic
Arts Show Co. and Bill Lamparter, who manages the program, include:
- New/significantly improved production software color
management, color variable data printing, prepress, and other production
areas.
- On-press integrated inline finishing
- Remote, soft copy, or screen proofing
- Color variable digital production printing
- Process-free, chemistry-free and inkjet imaged
platesetting
- Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) production
including label printing and affixing;
- Management information systems
- Computer integrated Manufacturing (JDF and other
methodology)
Now follows a representative selection of Print 05 & Converting 05
pre-show bulletins from exhibitors. Extended coverage will be carried in the
October issue of Graphic Arts Monthly:
Mitsubishi Lithographic Presses (Booth 4028) centers its presentation on the
13,000 sph 40" Diamond 3000TP five-over-five Tandem Perfector, running
live jobs with inline aqueous tower coater. The alternative perfecting solution
avoids problems associated with convertible-type perfecting machines. The need
to control front-to-back register is paramount when flipping paper in a
sheetfed press. The Tandem Perfector allows the printer to maintain the same
gripper throughout the length of the press, which can encompass as many as 12
printing units.
Reverse side prints first
The front side of the sheet is printed after the reverse side. Backside printed
sheets are passed to the front-side printing units without turning the sheets.
As a result, the tail of the sheet becomes the "new" gripper. This
method has proven to be far more reliable than stacking units because it takes
away the stress at the print impression point, thus reducing fan-out of the
substrate from unit to unit.
|
|
To date, Mitsubishi has shipped 46 Tandem Perfectors worldwide, with another
17 presses on order. At Print 05, the Tandem Perfector is equipped for
networked printing and JDF connectivity using the DiamondLink III automated
control system. Mitsubishi is presenting a digital network linking a management
information system (MIS), CIP4-compliant prepress, and the Tandem Perfector,
which incorporates a spectrophotometer-based closed-loop color control system.
Mitsubishi's ColorLink CIP4 server is transmitting makeready data from
electronic prepress for ink presets.
Goss International (Booth 3700) is demonstrating its Goss Automatic Transfer
option for non-stop web printing during plate changes, and is operating a Goss
Pacesetter 1100 saddlestitcher featuring servo-drive technology. The booth also
features each model from the gapless Goss Sunday press lineup.
"We see a strong future for web offset production, and we are uniquely
positioned to help our customers create it," explains Bob Brown, Goss
International CEO. The Goss Sunday press lineup includes the 24-page Sunday
2000, the double-circumference Sunday 4000, and the Sunday 3000/32, the world's
first web press featuring a wider 2x8 (32-page) format. Additional technologies
on display are the Goss Autoplate automated plate changing system, the Goss Web
Center comprehensive, modular workflow and control system, the Goss Ecocool
dryer with integrated chill rolls and closed-loop control options, and the Goss
PFF-3.2 pinless former folder.
Goss is also emphasizing versatile postpress configuration options through
auxiliary components, including Ferag equipment, now represented by Goss in
North America.
Goss has recently enhanced its Lifetime Support organization in North
America. An area within the PRINT 05 booth is exclusively devoted to presenting
service, parts, enhancement, training, and lithography services capabilities.
Xerox's 35,200-sq.ft. two-story booth is one of the largest at PRINT. The
second floor catwalk provides attendees a birds-eye view of end-to-end
integrated solutions that address five specific themes: unified offset and
digital; print-on-demand and web-to-print; book publishing; personalized
communications; and promotional transactional. Each zone includes Xerox's
FreeFlow Digital Workflow Collection, production technology, partner products,
and professional services.
Among the color products in the booth are the firm's flagship Xerox iGen3
110 digital production press and the DocuColor 8000 digital press. Monochrome
products include the Xerox Nuvera digital copier/printer and digital production
systems, Xerox also features its customer business development program that
includes the Profit Accelerator portfolio, which helps print providers identify
the best ways for operations to make and save money. In addition, its Xerox
Graphic Arts Premier Partner Network is a global e-community of more than 400
print service providers. "We provide tools, resources, knowledge, and
opportunities for our members to get together and share ideas on growing this
industry," says Quincy Allen, Xerox Production Systems Group president.
At Komori America (Booth 1262) President and COO Stephan Carter points to
the four perfectors as examples of, "the versatility of the Komori product
line and our commitment to our customers, by providing the flexibility and
adaptability to stay ahead of market requirements." In addition, Komori
will introduce the System 38S 16-page web press to the North American market by
demonstrating the advanced plate changing and makeready features on this new
offering to the web printing market. The Lithrone S40 perfector is being shown
in a 10-color configuration. The LS40P incorporates all the technology found on
the Lithrone S40, with the addition of Komori's double sized three cylinder
perfecting mechanism. Komori is demonstrating the LS40P printing on 24 point
board. Available options, such has UV technology, roll sheeters and inspection
systems.
The firm's Lithrone 40SP super perfector offers an alternative approach to
two-sided printing. Since it doesn't turn the sheet over Komori claims sheetfed
quality and near web press productivity for the machine. Its footprint takes
only slightly more space than a five-color press. The L540SP at Print 05
features the optional Magnum roll sheeter, capable of handling rolls up to 50''
in diameter. It does not require retraction when flat sheets run.
Komori and vendor partners, Screen (Booth 6100), EFI (Booth 8315) and
Horizon Standard (Booth 2845) are demonstrating a fully integrated JDF
workflow. The demonstration will begin with job ticket information entered into
EFI's Hagen OA management system. Using Screen's TrueFlow digital front end
software, the digital ink key preset information will be generated and sent to
the Komori K-Station and automatically merged with the Hagen populated job
ticket, which is then sent directly to the Komori press.
Production data from TrueFlow for the 16-page job is also sent to Horizon's
CABS4000 inline binding system to set up the final step of the JDF workflow.
Throughout the course of the job, production information will be sent to
"We all talk about JDF, but we believe that through our partnership
with EFI, Screen and Horizon Standard, visitors can actually see the process in
action," says Jacki Hudmon, director of marketing for Komori America
Corporation.
Also on display: a SPICA 29P, and a 6-unit Komori NL28 perfector standard
half size press. The latter features the three double sized cylinder perfector
mechanism found on the LS40 perfector press and running press-side soft
proofing, processless plates, and non-VOC inks.
Komori says the heart of its stand will be the Digital Integration Zone.
Every Lithrone press on the Komori stand is wired into the JDF network and live
job tickets are submitted via JDF/JMF to each press (using Komori's KStation
working in tandem with HiFlex and EFI's Hagen OA and Logic job management
systems) prior to every run.
At QuadTech (Booth 1673), "We are highlighting some of our many
customers who have become 'stars' to their own clients by embracing QuadTech
technologies," says Sharon Quint, marketing director. "By increasing
performance, these companies provide higher quality and more timely products to
end users." The firm's Five Star theme also highlights the differentiators
that it says position QuadTech as an industry leader in the supply of ancillary
control equipment for web printers.
|
|
"There are five main areas where QuadTech provides industry leading
products and services to its customers: excellent color management and control,
faster mark recognition for web and ribbon register, seamless integration across
our product range, sophisticated information management, and comprehensive
worldwide service and support," says Quint. Key products from its
portfolio include color management and control with new features including the
QuadTech color control system on ICON: incorporating System Brunner Instrument
Flight technology to control every attribute of ink on paper, from solid ink
density to three-color gray balance. The QuadTech color control system with
Instrument Flight analyzes more than 30 color variables, and allows for
comprehensive press optimization, a key component in fully color-managed
production.
For web and ribbon register the QuadTech register guidance and ribbon
control systems, both with MultiCam, provide advanced register control for
commercial web offset and newspaper presses. The MultiCam camera designed
specifically for print (versus off-the-shelf cameras) is up to 30 times faster
at finding marks than other sensors on the market, says QuadTech. It can also
scan the entire cylinder circumference without compromising system performance,
maintaining sight of register marks even during periods of maximum register
upset, such as at a reel splice.
To reduce trim waste, MultiCam sensors recognize marks in an area of
circumferential white space as small 0.2'', increasing the printable area of
the web.
QuadTech's ICON integrated controls platform is key to making presses as
efficient as possible, says the firm, allowing all QuadTech products mounted on
a press to be driven by a single touchscreen, functioning as the interface to
digital job tickets. This connectivity reduces changeover times and minimizes
set-up times for both new jobs and re-runs. It's an open interface to the
architecture of many press control units, enabling almost plug-and-play
compatibility and a high level of control.
Finally, QuadTech's Management Information Data Central integrates to
JDF-enabled systems and controls. Overlaying the control provided by other
QuadTech ICON-based products, it provides automatic configuration as well as
sophisticated statistics and reports on press performance and optimization.
Buying vs. Leasing
Once the planning and analysis are completed and equipment and systems
selected, the final step is finance. Large capital equipment suppliers have
their own finance arms or close relationships with lending organizations.
Exhibiting at Print 05 are People's Capital and Leasing (Booth 767), Ervin
Equipment Leasing (Booth 13085) and Great Atlantic Capital (Booth 5180).
Leasing was a $218 billion industry last year, says the Equipment Leasing
Assn. Printing equipment was about $3 billion of that. With the array of
technology and equipment on display at Print 05, it's a safe bet that graphic
communications company leaders will soon be entering into new equipment leases.
The growing popularity of leasing reflects its role as cost-effective way to
keep pace with rapidly changing technology; another source of capital to
printing firms seeking to expand; and a way to preserve capital. However, as
NAPL associate consultant Mary Redmond, president of Independent Lease Review,
Inc., notes, not all leases are created equal.
"There are a whole host of variables in leases," she says.
"While leasing contracts can provide significant benefits, many also
contain potential pitfalls." Most are not obvious, sometimes
"buried" under what can be frustratingly obtuse "legalese."
Also, as most leases are multi-year agreements, the negative repercussions
to a company of a "mistake" can multiply over time. NAPL says its
Consulting Services can help you avoid that. A careful review by someone
knowledgeable with the process can cut as much as 5% to 15% from the cost of
leasing equipment by trimming hidden fees.
Visit NAPL at Print 05 & Converting 05 (Booth 862); or, after the show,
call Mary Redmond or John Hyde at 800.642.6275.
Rising Prominence: Digital Color
Presses
Xerox flagship digital color production press, the iGen3 110, will figure
prominently in its two-tiered exhibit (Booth 1228). In the toner-based digital
production color arena, the latest offerings by Eastman Kodak (including the
latest 20'' NexPress 2500 in Booth 6707), Xeikon (the model 5000 in Booth 6742)
and HP Indigo (Booth 12005) will be on view. Océ (Booth 2462) links multiple
units of its seven-color digital presses to achieve production output levels.