Software is key for an effective workflow

The Job Definition Format was the printing industry’s first attempt to create an environment where jobs might be shared across different production steps to improve the production efficiency of the print business. 

The correctly described file could flow from receipt of the file through the production steps according to the intent applied to the file with business information used to define the numbers needed, the requisition of appropriate materials and then raising the invoice after.

It has proved effective up to a point. It works well with standard products produced in the same way, a result of a heritage that dates back to the 1990s. The world has changed. More tasks need to come into the reckoning, digital printing is now a huge issue along with new product types. A new way of automating print is required, taking a cue from the app stores from Apple or Google.

Enfocus Switch has been the glue for many prepress workflows linking different applications in a seamless flow from one application to another. Once dropped into a hot folder, a job file can be processed into a print ready file or plate. This is not new.

A number of integrators have created API style links into MIS and other apps, say to courier businesses, building bespoke platforms for automation. This is typically how online printers have developed.

Zaikio is attempting to change this. The company, part funded by Heidelberg, wants to create the automation for print. This is Mission Control, the idea being to link an application to Mission Control through a standardised data structure. This can in turn send the file to the next process stage in the correct format for that software. 

Developers need only create a single interface rather than needing to build interfaces for numerous applications.

It is starting to roll out. Zaikio has demonstrated how a file from Infigo web portal can be sent for processing by an MIS and back into prepress. Zaikio now needs to press ahead to show real users and workflows with as broad a level of support as possible. This may be delivered at Drupa.

It will not happen overnight. OneVision CEO Hussein Khalil told the Horizon open house last year that “automation will take many many years. It is an evolutionary process. No single company knows everything”.

Investment in automation will pay for itself he explains. “The real risk is hesitation, or tentative steps to go halfway rather than the whole hog.”

The need increases as the availability of labour is increasingly restrictive. Automation helps make the most of the resources that are available. Once implemented automation brings huge productivity gains with it.

And currently, despite the existence of JDF and its offspring XJDF, there is no agreed standard for automation in print. “This means there can be no out of the box automation,” says Khalil. OneVision will not run short of customers in the foreseeable future.