Re: What is Workflow? by Andrew Tribute
Hi Peter,
The article is from Whattheythink.com. Andrew Tribute is a frequent contributing writer for them so I would imagine Whattheythink.com commissioned it. Andrew is part of their eXpert Row Commentary and writes Tribute Tuesdays. Other industry experts such as Frank Romano write for them too. Andrew is also a contributing writer for Seybold amongst other publications.
That being said, Heidelberg does has the unique benefit of developing sw for not only prepress, presses and post press along with manufacturing the above. This provides us the opportunity of more extensive integration than any other company due to having a common R&D over a complete product line.
In addition to what is stated in the article, we have much more to offer. Most systems have the capability of presetting ink zone digitally. We do too but to a higher degree by offering unlimited ink/paper combination with multiple printing characteristic curves.. This provides a more accurate presetting and therefore a bit faster makeready. We even offer a software that hails from our color scanner days called Color Assistant. This resides on the press console If an operator tweaks a run, the printing characteristic curve can be altered and stored. As you run more of the the ink/paper combination, if you see a trend in color moves, you can alter the curve so the next time the ink/paper combination is used, the newer, more accurate curve will be used. By the way, the ink/paper combination can be written into the JDF via our Pinance MIS. This along with other information such as Job Name, paper weight, size, stripping information, binding intent, number of pages, forms, etc are also written. When the job is opened in Printready, the stripping template, if it does not exist, is automatically generated based on the parameter. It is fully editable with Signa Station. When the job is done and plated, the press operator opens the job on his CP 2000 press console and the proper printing curve is loaded based on the ink/paper combination. If the press is equipped with our Preset Feeder Plus, data is sent to automatically setting the feed head set, side joggers for the paper, gripper height at in-feed, side guide, air setting on feeder, printing pressure, rear and side delivery guides and spray powder length. Another feature we offer for the CP 2000 is Plate On Demand. The CP 2000 press console has a touchtone screen. With Plate On Demand, a press operator has the opportunity to call up a plate remake right from their console. This is handy if press runs multiple shifts and prepress in only one. Just leave on the workflow and CtP. The press operator even sees a thumbnail of the flat and can select one color or multiple colors.
And then there is Prinect Pressroom Manager and Prinect Intergration Manager. You have a Printready cockpit that not only shows you the status of jobs in prepress but also press. The press actually becomes part of the workflow sequence with prepress. You can look at a job in progress on a press, find out how much the makeready was, how many good sheets are printed and how much more to print, You read about additional integration in the article.
And at Drupa, we take the next step with JDF integration of Postpress.
Andrew must have found Prinect interesting enough to make it the focus of his article.
Regards,
Mark Tonkovich
Heidelberg USA
Product Manager, CtP & Proofing