Giving a Dam

In the world of packaging and package printing, digital asset management is also dynamic asset management.

IT HAS BEEN suggested that packaging and advertising will mount the last defense of ink-on-paper against the onslaught of digital and virtual technologies. Try packaging a box of Wheaties on CD-ROM or wrapping a birthday gift in a graphical user interface. Now that the drama has subsided, the rhetoric has also cooled, leaving the industry to deal with new and evolving realities, among them, the proliferation of digital workflows and data requiring identification, categorization, and storage.

What? Why? How?

Any digital media file with value to an organization is a digital asset. Digital assets can include images, graphics, logos, video and sound files, Web pages, PDF documents, application files like Quark and Illustrator; advertisements, marketing collateral, brochures, product packaging designs, and so on. In the aggregate, analog and digital assets are referred to as "content."

The management of digital assets is a fundamental concern of almost everyone involved in the process, from suppliers to ad agencies to corporate end users and everyone in between. It is also an area of growing interest for packaging printers and commercial printers with a packaging profit center. In fact, the need to handle the burgeoning volume of data used to power digital workflows means that most graphic communications firms and their clients are already doing some kind of asset management, even if it amounts to simple archiving on disk or server.

Digital asset management (DAM) or digital media asset management (DMAM) assumes that the volume of data is growing in direct proportion to the need to adopt robust solutions that are capacious and flexible enough to locate and retrieve specific digital content for use, reuse, and repurposing across diverse media.

Digital asset management involves the collection and central storage not only of the data, but also information about the data: formats, size, authors, past usage, location, versions, authorizations, and so on. DAM collects, indexes, categorizes, secures, searches, transforms, assembles, and exports content (digital assets + metadata). Because the value of any digital asset is predicated on its accessibility, any DAM solution worth its salt will be based on software that is flexible enough to integrate with an organization's existing systems and processes. It likely also will feature an intuitive interface that enables users to locate, retrieve, modify, and redistribute the desired assets.

A digital asset management system will facilitate the management of digital assets with the aid of computer software and/or hardware that archives, tracks, and manages both digital elements, and the metadata that describe them. DAM systems enable users to quickly recall these elements for use in new jobs.

Needs and benefits

For consumer product and packaging companies, digital asset management addresses the need to manage a global brand presence, shorten time to market, and scrub time and labor from the production process. For printers, it addresses the need to develop value-added services and workflows to support them.

This scenario is complicated because the workflows that generate the so-called "rich media" assets typical of consumer product packaging are fundamentally dynamic, in line with requirements that must be updated as regulations change or as flavors, colors or other ingredients are added. Applied to packaging, digital asset management systems must be:

• Flexible, capable of handling workflows that change more or less constantly. DAM systems also must be able to accommodate a staggering number of file formats that reflect the graphic design, 3-D modeling, and rendering and other techniques used in modern package design.

• Secure, with levels of access strictly defined.

Every link in the packaging supply chain has a stake in the timely, secure collection, retrieval, and redistribution of content. Matching an application with the right digital asset management solution will create a reliable, complete, accessible and searchable repository of digital assets, and preserve the ability to reuse and redeploy these assets. For supply chain partners from content creators through packaging printers and converters, advantages can include less time spent looking for files; shorter file transfer times; less repeat work: and a reduction in scheduling and load-balancing problems.

Esko-Graphics WebCenter

According to Susie Stitzel, product manager for Web products, Esko-Graphics, a digital asset management system or module should automate the collection of assets; ensure the security and confidentiality of those assets; and accommodate growth and change in assets—all without compromising the speed or functionality of the process to which it is being applied.

A supplier of prepress systems for commercial printers, Esko-Graphics debuted its comprehensive Scope workflow environment for packaging at Graph Expo '04. In addressing specific packaging market segments such as tag and label, flexible packaging and corrugated, Scope workflow covers a range of functions, from job and product specification to graphic and structural design to preproduction to platemaking for printing and toolmaking for converting. Scope adds capabilities for project coordination, digital asset management, and distributed proofing and approval. "Our goal," says Stitzel, "is to enable supply chain partners to communicate globally, effectively, and in real time."

Scope can be configured with WebCenter, a collaboration and asset management server said to provide secure project and file management over the Web. "The idea behind WebCenter is to bring products to market faster without increasing the associated costs," Stitzel says.

Paxonix PaxPro

Parsippany, N.J.-based Paxonix, a division of packaging conglomerate MeadWestvaco Co., is an Internet-enabled packaging solutions business with a keen awareness of the critical role packaging plays in "carrying the brand" for its consumer product and pharmaceutical clients. Paxonix also has a keen awareness of the pitfalls involved.

According to Kent St. Vrain, vice president of sales and marketing, the software package developed by Paxonix was originally homegrown for use by MeadWestvaco prepress and design houses that had had it up to there, so to speak, with the need to rework or remake files that came in late, incomplete, or in the wrong versions.

Paxonix PaxPro Asset Management provides a secure, centralized place to store, organize, manage, review, and mark up any kind of digital asset—the software supports more than 400 file formats in all, according to St. Vrain. "Paxonix resolves problems early in the cycle, before accumulated variables, especially mounting deadline pressures, increase the potential for error," says St. Vrain. By addressing potential errors much earlier, he explains, Paxonix PaxPro claims to cut project cycle time by up to 30 percent of the time. As a bonus, "The more the files change, the more benefit can be derived from the tool," says St. Vrain.

Phototype "Photoscope"

"Anybody in the package printing supply chain that sends or receives digital information is going to be affected by digital asset management," says Kevin Lanigan, vice president, sales for Phototype, an integrated premedia company and graphic solutions provider headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio. Phototype works with a variety of software developers to bring order to digital workflows by storing, accessing, and distributing their assets.

According to Lanigan, while up to 80 percent of converters and flexographers regularly receive a flood of digital material (files), many still lack the infrastructure to store, retrieve and distribute those files. Phototype provides that infrastructure via an asset management "brain" called "Photoscope," a turnkey service designed to archive graphic assets on a relational, as opposed to a hierarchical, database. Using Photoscope, Phototype can tie in to the flexographer's or converter's existing system(s) or other database(s) within the printer's or converter's workflow, or link to these via the Internet. "The first thing we try to do is to step back, determine what the ideal system would be, and then determine how to customize the Photoscope software for the unique needs of that printer," Lanigan says.

Once its assets are cataloged, the company, vendor, or its clients can search the database by name, keyword, date, etc.; view or download assets; convert files to different formats for repurposing; assign users to projects or jobs; set up routing and approvals; even integrate audio and video files. According to Lanigan, levels of privilege designated "read," "read only," and "administrative" typically are sufficient to preserve the integrity of the file.

KPGs' ExaStore

It helps to remember that digital assets are data and that data take up space. When a prepress workflow manages both day-to-day production and data storage purposes, server performance can decline, dragging down productivity. Given the amount of data they must keep on hand, the problem for packaging printers can be acute. For printers who are approaching the "pain point," Kodak Polychrome Graphics (KPG) offers ExaStore, which the company describes as a highly automated solution that integrates with existing platform workflows, enables uninterrupted access to critical data, preserves data integrity, and is cost-efficient, easy to manage, and "hard to kill," according to Tim Lauzon, worldwide director for storage, KPG.

The ExaStore system consolidates data into a single "pool" that can be directly accessed (including remotely) by all workstation clients and workflow servers on a given network. This greatly simplifies data management and frees up production servers to focus—appropriately—on production. In addition, says Lauzon, ExaStore is scalable on-the-fly, meaning that system doesn't need to go down in order to expand. KPG claims productivity increases from 20 percent to 30 percent with ExaStore.

"ExaStore becomes the cornerstone for a robust system providing central storage, security, and continuity," Lauzon says. As such, "it enables packaging printers to get the jobs out the door faster, integrates islands of data, and avoids costly file remakes."

Heidelberg Prinect

Heidelberg will leverage the power of its comprehensive workflow management solution, Prinect, with the Print 05 debut of a Content Manager for print. According to Dennis Ryan, Heidelberg's product manager for Prinect Prepress Products, the Content Manager will be offered as an optional extension of Heidelberg's PDF-based, Printready prepress workflow. For the printer that elects to use it, the Content Manager will add a content-related database to the Web-based Remote Access module of the Prinect Printready Prepress System.

Unlike conventional DAM systems, Ryan explains, the Content Manager combines three solutions in one: workflow management, content management, and the Prinect Printready System Archiver for shared central management of archived data.

The Content Manager will permit users to manage any data format by key word and context, coordinate data easily and access it faster. "All parties can access all data at any time, anywhere," Ryan says. "All external users need is Internet access and a Web browser." He adds that the Content Manager database will include a "Job Watcher" function that 'sees' all parts of the job and monitors privilege, permissions and access accordingly.

Consistent with a basic function of digital asset management, the Content Manager will be capable of handling diverse data sets such as images, text and graphics that typically accumulate in the creative stage until completion of a PDF. This feature is particularly useful for the reuse and repurposing of data, according to Heidelberg.

By Jean-Marie Hershey

Prepress Editor