MIS to Workflow Integration: Getting Production to Flow

AT THE dawn of this still
 relatively new millennium, the printing industry was all abuzz about the concepts of computer-integrated manufacturing, the Digital Smart Factory and lights-out manufacturing. Workflow integration via the job definition format (JDF) became its quest for the Holy Grail.

At the center of this automated processing was to be a management information system (MIS) feeding job data downstream to set up prepress, press and postpress equipment, with instantaneous updates from the shop floor communicated back upstream to the MIS. This revolution has yet to sweep through the printing industry, but that vision is still alive and actively being worked on.