A Vision for Managing and Moving Digital Assets

The story of Networked Graphic Production, an industry initiative to improve digital asset management and workflow.

As this column has suggested numerous times in the past three years, the packaging industry often models the commercial printing industry in technology adoption—if not in development. We've been predictably just behind the commercial world at employing PostScript, CTP, color management, and PDF. If the trend follows, we could be glimpsing our own future again by looking at the work being done by the Networked Graphic Production™ Partners. This group, just 2 years old, is an industry trade initiative aggressively aimed at the adoption of the JDF file format. Its story is an interesting one, and the outcome of Partner efforts should bode well for label and packaging printers of every ilk and size.