JDF Update -- Print Connectivity

by marie alonso

Business Development Consultant

The three most prominent features of JDF are its ability to carry a print job from concept through completion, its ability to bridge the communication gap between production and management information services, and its ability to do so under nearly any precondition.

JDF, JOB Definition Format, is without question the most significant and viable integration initiative targeting print connectivity today. The road to realizing the benefit from JDF integration has been a long one. There have been many milestones along the way—and Drupa 2004 is the biggest one in the ultimate quest for print connectivity. JDF has been steadily building momentum. Drupa 2004 will see the delivery of new levels of integration and performance for this next-level automation of print production performance.

JDF is an open standard job ticketing language that provides the foundation for users to build next-generation printing environments that encompass both the content and the business aspects of production workflow. The Job Definition Format is a comprehensive, XML-based file format for end-to-end job ticket specifications combined with a message description standard and message interchange protocol.

The JDF Idea

JDF was created to develop an open, extensible, XML-based job ticket standard, as well as a mechanism to provide new business opportunities for all individuals and companies involved in the process of creating, managing and producing published documents.

Building on existing technologies such as the Print Production Format (PPF) developed by CIP4 (International Cooperation for the Integration of Processes in Prepress, Press and Postpress) and Adobe's Portable Job Ticket Format (PJTF), JDF supplies a means for printing businesses to streamline the process of producing printed material.

In the past few years, the demand for greater unification of mechanized and automated systems has led to the advent of specification formats. These formats spawned a generation of systems in the mid-1990s that began to provide the ability to link certain elements of the prepress, press and postpress processes.

The formats, however, had inherent limitations and proprietary architectures. For example, they could address only certain aspects of a print job, they could do little to help in the authoring and revision processes, and they could not provide production automation systems with the ability to control and track jobs.

However, limitations and all, these formats have paved the way for improving the existing architecture, and indeed for improving the graphic arts industry as a whole.

In recent years, there has been a call for the printing and publishing industries to create two things: a standards-based, supply-chain infrastructure and a set of protocols specific to the process of creating, manufacturing and distributing printed information.

Three companies prominent in the graphic arts industry—Adobe Systems, Electronics for Imaging (EFI) and Heidelberg—are carrying strong JDF technologies and initiatives to Drupa 2004.

The Drupa Deliverables

From Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop to Adobe PostScript with Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) accelerating the journey, the extensive collection of Adobe tools plays a vital role in print, from concept to the final printed piece—with a concentration on JDF targeting Drupa 2004.

Ten years ago Adobe introduced PDF—the most efficient file format to send to the RIP. Yet print providers needed more control of the PDF files that customers were sending to them. Adobe responded with the recently introduced Adobe Acrobat 6.0 Professional.

At Drupa 2004, Adobe will encourage industry-wide adoption of the JDF standard by demonstrating practical examples of how the XML-based job ticket file format can improve communication, from document creation to production, and automate print workflows.

Adobe will showcase its unique position to enable easy JDF intent creation through integration with its widely used creative applications. Technology demonstrations of JDF creation in the Adobe Creative Suite will integrate with production and printing systems in a number of its partners' booths including Agfa, Heidelberg, EFI, Fujifilm, Dainippon Screen and Xerox.

As part of its collaboration with CIP4, Adobe will participate in JDF Parc, an area on the show floor hosted by the CIP4 organization, where attendees can get the most up-to-date information on the JDF standard through presentations, product literature and JDF workflow demonstrations.

As one of the founders of CIP4 and creators of the JDF specification, Adobe is committed to an industry-wide, all-inclusive effort to bring JDF to market, and looks to the current and future members of CIP4 to assure cross-company inter-operability.

Turning to EFI, the company's commitment to open JDF standards throughout its product line and its partnerships with Adobe and Heidelberg will be clearly evident at Drupa 2004. EFI's JDF activities at Drupa are aimed at helping printers understand how they can apply JDF today, and how EFI's best-of-class products incorporating JDF support will help printers streamline their operations, increase their profitability and attract new business through value-added services.

New solutions from EFI at Drupa 2004 that will showcase JDF begin with customer-facing Websites like EFI Exchange and EFI PrintSmith. These products use the EFI JDF Connector architecture to bring digital content, job tickets and e-commerce transactions into the business and production workflow at a printing operation.

Providing Job Information

Once the jobs arrive at the printing plant, JDF enables computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM) by providing complete job ticket information for job planning, tracking and accurate billing in the EFI print management (MIS) systems, formerly Printcafe.

Content files and JDF tickets that describe how to produce the jobs flow from the EFI MIS into prepress workflow solutions (both from EFI and third-party vendors) via EFI's JDF Connector.

When the job is ready to go to manufacturing, the MIS system communicates press setup information to Heidelberg, Komori and MAN Roland presses via the EFI JDF Connector. If all or part of the job is digital, the MIS system sends JDF data and content directly into EFI's Balance, Fiery and OneFlow workflow solutions.

EFI will also be an active participant in the CIP4 JDF booth at Drupa. The company will showcase open JDF connectivity across multi-vendor workflows including EFI Hagen OA, OneFlow and Balance. EFI is a partner member of CIP4, and has participated in every CIP4 JDF interoperability test forum. It is committed to open standards connectivity.

At Drupa 2004, Heidelberg's family of Prinect modules that provide efficiency through the use of CIM will be a focus. All Prinect modules have a common goal: to transparently integrate all management and production processes in order to maximize printing efficiency. With Prinect, the use of a standardized workflow allows printers to work more efficiently. Prinect integrates new products with existing products across the entire production workflow—from prepress to press to postpress. Prinect incorporates business management (MIS) to form a seamlessly integrated production and management system using CIP3-PPF and JDF standard interfaces.

Prinect is an efficient workflow. Using Prinect greatly reduces redundant job data entry, freeing production operators to produce, rather than manage, jobs. With Prinect, the job data is entered once, at the beginning of the process, and saved as an electronic job ticket that is transferred through all stages of production.

This not only saves time and lets the operators concentrate on production, but it also greatly reduces the likelihood of errors that can otherwise result in additional waste in materials, time and money.

About the Author

Marie Alonso is president and editorial director of PrintWriter.com, a leading independent online news source for the commercial printing industry. PrintWriter is a free information site for today's printing professionals, featuring daily print industry news updates and special columns targeting the commercial printing industry. She can be reached by calling (856) 216-9956 or by e-mailing marie@printwriter.com.

JDF Benefits

* JDF delivers the ability to carry a print job from genesis through completion. This includes a detailed description of the creative, prepress, press, postpress and delivery processes.

* JDF bridges the communication gap between production and management information services—enabling instantaneous job and device tracking, as well as detailed pre- and post-calculation of jobs in the graphic arts.

* JDF connects the customer's view of the product and the manufacturing process by defining a process-independent product view, as well as a process-dependent production view of a print job.

* JDF delivers the ability to define and track any user-defined workflow without constraints on the supported workflow models—including serial, parallel, overlapping and iterative processing in arbitrary combinations and over distributed locations.

Interested in learning more about JDF? For a complete guide—The JDF Revolution: An Educational Guide to JDF—visit www.adobe.com, www.efi.com and www.us.heidelberg.com to view a PDF or e-mail printing_promotion@adobe.com to request a free hard copy.