Linking islands of automation across a print business has the potential to cut costs, improve quality and speed turnaround. Michael Walker looks at how it is done and how far you can go.

There are few aspects of a print business that cannot be computerised these days. It is at least theoretically possible to automate things such as business development with CRM (customer relationship management), job submission via web to print portals with automated pre-flighting feeding into prepress and production workflows, MIS or ERP software booking jobs, tracking stock and job progress and generating invoices, collecting data for productivity and profitability analysis, and interfacing with finance systems and shipping services.

‘We live in an automated world. The shift is to greater efficiency in electronic processes, not just mechanical ones,’ said Steve Richardson, sales director at Optimus 2020. The most obvious benefits of linking everything at the company level are the same as they were for automating each constituent area: faster response or execution, reduced errors and wastage, fewer delays due to re-keying or unnecessary duplication of data, better deployment of resources to give a competitive edge on pricing and quality while making a worthwhile margin. But the components do not all come from one vendor or developer, so it is not surprising that the demand for wider integration is coming directly from printers.

Integration between production systems and MIS, web to print and content systems is almost a necessity now, according to Muna Assi, product marketing manager, workflow solutions, at HP’s Indigo division: ‘Almost every customer I speak with is interested in these types of integrations,’ she said. This is borne out by Alan Clarke, graphic communications technology marketing manager at Xerox UK, who reports that he gets one or two questions every week about it and that demand is growing to the point where ‘some deals now depend on integration’.

 

Appetite for integration

On top of the well-established trend for printed products to be required in ever-shorter runs, more quickly and more cheaply, customer desire for features such as one-to-one personalisation, cross-media support or promotional/regional variations in packaging, mean that print is part of an increasingly complex package of services that have to be produced and delivered efficiently, which can only fuel the appetite for integration. So where do you start?

A management information system is logically at the heart of a fully-integrated print concern. Print MIS grew up around offset print operations, providing estimating, order logging, job bag, stock control, reporting and analysis functions. Despite its well-established roots in analogue print, MIS is arguably even more critical for digital printing where large numbers of very short-run or variable data jobs are the norm.

‘Digital printers need quotes, job booking and scheduling very quickly, as they’re doing more jobs a day and shorter runs,’ said Tharstern’s sales director Lee Ward. ‘Fifteen minutes of admin for a job that’s only on press for 10 minutes is not the right balance.’

The integration challenge here is that the number of additional systems, processes, print types and print products is growing. Emerson Welch, marketing manager at MIS developer Clarity, points out that one survival strategy adopted by print companies in the post-2008 recession was diversification. ‘Some are now doing three or four different things, litho and digital, screen and wide-format digital, things they would previously have outsourced,’ he noted.

EFI’s approach, embodied in the Productivity Suite launched at the company’s Connect user conference in January, is to offer a range of ‘certified’ workflows between its Fiery DFEs, Digital StoreFront web to print platform and its various MIS offerings.

‘Our customers are after integration that really works out of the box,’ said Gerald Walsh, director, market development, EFI Productivity Software. ‘We’ve identified for each group – enterprise packaging or commercial printers, mid-sized printers – product suites for which we’ve tested and certified integration, including costing and tracking.’

To support this, EFI is synchronising its software updates to keep the integration current and includes some third-party products such as Kodak’s Prinergy workflow in its certified configurations.

The opposite to EFI’s ‘complete package’ model is the ‘best of breed’ approach adopted by Tharstern, which offers its own e4Print storefront for online catalogue-type ordering but also partners with Chili Publish to offer user-designed print with close integration to the MIS. A combination of cXML (a subset of XML designed for commerce) and web services allows integration with a range of other systems, such as web to print portals from Infigo, Vpress and ROI360 or customers’ bespoke systems.

 

It’s good to talk

While EFI is able to do some under-the-bonnet tinkering to make its own products talk better to each other, most others are using a mix of standards and formats to get the data back and forth.

For the prepress workflow vendors – Agfa, Fujifilm, Heidelberg and Kodak – JDF/JMF is a popular choice to connect with MIS and is perhaps the most common integration as the technologies are mature. John Davies at Fujifilm Europe commented: ‘There is an increasing trend for jobs to be delivered by the customer service team with the PDF files via the MIS to improve the efficiency of the prepress process.’

The information sent from the workflow to the MIS typically includes materials used and time taken in the prepress stages plus notifications when plates or proofs have been output. Job ticket information such as print process or output device, page size, number of pages and imposition scheme pass in the opposite direction.

JDF/JMF is also supported by EFI, HP and Xerox. In the digital arena, the information available to the MIS will usually also include device listing and capabilities, job queue and pre-flight status, media usage, ‘clicks’, overall job processing time and individual times for the download, RIP, route and print stages. Instructions can be sent to the DFE from the MIS specifying number of copies, choice of media, finishing intent and assigned print device for multi-printer setups, and pause, resume or abort commands can also be sent this way.

Communications between MIS and other systems such as web to print portals or CRM or marketing automation tools is more likely to be carried out via standard XML or the cXML variant, or CSV (comma separated values, the default format for database and spreadsheet exchange). Heidelberg has recently added CSV support to its Prinect workflow, for example, while Agfa supports both that and XML for communication between Apogee and web to print portals.

Xerox supports XML and CSV via its Manifest Automation from Xerox (MAX), a hot folder-based interface to its FreeFlow Core production workflow, as well as XSLT (extensible stylesheet language transformation), a ‘translator’ for non-standard XML or JDF submissions.

A third integration option is via API (application programming interface), most likely to be used with bespoke systems as it requires programming expertise. An API provides access to the inner workings of the host software and can be used to provide non-standard integration options. EFI has an API for its Fiery DFEs, Heidelberg has introduced one for its Analyze Point database, Clarity is developing one for its Clarity Go mobile CRM software, and HP offers both a general JDF API and a dedicated one for its SmartStream Production Centre.

 

Who does what?

Typically the integration is a joint project between the MIS developer, the production workflow vendor and/or the web to print or other system developer. Agfa’s Erik Peeters points out that ‘only large customers have people with the proper skills to coordinate the integration’. Involving a third-party integration specialist is another route; HP works with Hybrid Solutions to support its Production Centre customers, for example.

A three-way integration project was recently completed at commercial printer Fine Print in Oxford, where an ROI360 web to print portal is linked to Shuttleworth MIS and a Heidelberg Prinect workflow driving both digital and litho presses. As orders are placed online via the marketing portal, job tickets are automatically created in the MIS. Artwork is sent from the portal to the MIS which attaches it to the job and passes it on via JDF to the production workflow for imposition and output. Job tickets may include delivery notes and packing labels to speed delivery. Production information is sent back upstream to the MIS to provide progress updates.

Fine Print’s managing director Dan Bakewell commented: ‘The vision of seamless integration is a reality; a single workflow is achievable from input online through to production, delivery and invoicing.’

A similar project was carried out last year at Barking-based Precision Printing, where Vpress Coreprint was integrated with Tharstern Primo MIS and Precision’s own OneFlow production automation software. In the automated workflow, files are received, booked in, imposed, sent to press automatically and scheduled via OneFlow up to the point of shipping, at which point the order is scanned, a carrier label printed, the order invoiced in the MIS and the tracking number sent back to the web to print system to allow customers to follow progress. Precision’s technical director Steeve Rocaute confirmed that it has ‘closed the loop and achieved a significant overhead cost reduction’.

The technology exists, but it is the people that need to make it work. Optimus’s Steve Richardson concludes: ‘Wider integration requires more thought. The customer needs to have a vision and appreciation of the process, but it takes a concerted effort to join the dots.’