JDF BASICS -- It's Just the Ticket

Having lived through some of the industry's past attempts at interoperability, Littrell says it's not yet clear to what extent vendors will have an incentive to add special hooks to their implementations.

"I'm not sure if there will be advantages from a technical standpoint. Maybe there would be a need to extend the spec for something like Hexachrome support," he speculates. "However, vendors are going to have to cooperate for the Smart Factory concept to succeed."