US Patent Awarded for Automated Job Estimating

[prwhite]

The US Patent and Trademark office has granted arifiQ—Development AB, Sweden—a patent for “A system and a method of optimizing a print production process”.

In a world where everything else is immediately available, the wait for print job estimates has stood out as an exception. arifiQ’s Optimizing & Estimating Print Engine, eliminates the wait: enabling sales & customers to initiate print estimates online, get the quote and place the order. This technology is expected to be inside or integrated with different solutions, including MIS, W2P and Prepress & Production Workflows.

Why patentable? The system & method are patentable because they replace human decisions made by skilled estimators. arifiQ’s Print Engine finds & determines the best: imposition/signatures, sheet size, printing press, paper; and calculates runtimes & costs.

The arifiQ patent—US Patent No.10956099—covers the following:

• Automatic calculation of production costs for each possible job,
• Co-production / gang-run,
• A virtual print driver, which sends job orders to the PSP from any software application,
• An API for calculating print costs, and
• The ability to build marketplaces & portals, with multiple cooperating (or competing) printing companies. For more information

 

[Whitaker]

Thanks for the info. At quick glance the system looks promising. I forwarded it to the owner here; our current system is less than great...

 

[michaelejahn]

Wow. Like I would need a system to tell me business cards can run 24 up on a 12x18 sheet 4/4 on an indigo. Pretty much all storefronts offer a way to estimate time / cost - and most Print MIS can automate it so one can place an order and it will automatically impose and print unattended ( PressWise has been doing all that since 2006 ) - reading the patent, seem like if you have a lot of equipment, it is designed to select the best option to run a job. Most print service providers already know that ( example, less than 2000, probably run it digital, over 2000, might consider offset )

I suppose f you were VistaPrint, Mimeo or 4Over, they might look into that sort of thing...( that is, if they have not already built that logic themselves )