Seamless Workflow

Connecting the dots

Automation is a prerequisite for integration, and the evolution of digital prepress workflows has followed this course. Prepress workflows have seen multiple time- and labor-intensive manual steps replaced by automated tasks performed with little or no human intervention. In both commercial and packaging settings, an integrated workflow is one in which these individual automated steps combine to produce a seamless system. The overall goal of workflow integration is improving accuracy, eliminating duplication of effort and waste, increasing efficiency, shrinking delivery times, and providing printers with a decisive competitive advantage. The primary driver of workflow integration is the Job Definition Format (JDF) universal job ticket specification, which is designed to simplify the job specification process, ensure cross-vendor interoperability, and automate manual production processes to yield accurate, predictable, and repeatable end products.