JDF - Recipe for Soup ... and a Sandwich

PDF (portable document format) may be the greatest thing since sliced bread (or at least since PostScript), but it takes more than bread to make a sandwich that will satisfy a hungry customer.

TODAY'S SHORTER PRINT runs depend on reliable, high-quality print output, delivered with minimal turnaround. The addition of JDF (job definition format) production language to PDF-based workflows increasingly is seen as a way to dramatically reduce print production time and costs while ensuring consistent, reliable output—even when last minute changes are required. In packaging applications, the benefits of JDF-enhanced or JDF-enabled workflows show up in better customer service; faster time to market; better management of collaborative workflows; and greater facility in handling labor-intensive functions like trapping, color mapping, step-and-repeat, and complex files containing large amounts of graphical and structural data.

"Traditionally there have been weak communication links between the customers—the consumer product company and its customers, the retailers—the design firm, the prepress company, and converters," says Ian Hole, director of market development, Esko-Graphics. "This results in a workflow that is error prone, hard to optimize, and hard to automate." In other words, one sandwich short of a full-fledged picnic.

Explains Gee Ranasinha, director of marketing, DALiM Software: "Production automation is reaching a point now that simply automating individual cost centers—studio, prepress, proofing, print, etc.—is no longer enough. Each department must be aware of the job flow of interconnecting departments to increase efficiencies."

Right now, Ranasinha says, many departments have to re-enter the same details when a job enters its own systems. This not only adds a lot of unnecessary work, but creates many opportunities for error at every stage of the project cycle: in the design stage, with its focus on both graphics and structure; in preproduction, where prepress, proofing, platemaking, prototyping, and diemaking occur; and in production, where printing and diecutting/stripping take place.

"While you may have a great communications and reporting system that trickles down from the design studio to the proofing department, it would be helpful to have a reporting system that's bidirectional," he says. "Getting everyone on the same 'page' is why a JDF-based production system is valuable."

One way to check for errors, says Hole, "is to make the process traceable. If the system can be tracked, it can provide global status information of the process, checking on deadlines (and) reprioritizing tasks when needed. Many think JDF is the solution."

In the soup

While both PDF and JDF have been endorsed as industry standards by the International Cooperation for the Integration of Processes in Prepress, Press and Postpress Consortium (CIP4), they perform very different functions.

Whereas PostScript, its groundbreaking precursor, is a device-independent page-description format, PDF is a file format that encapsulates all image, graphic, and text data files in a refined but unscreened format, eliminates font problems, and is the most compatible file for raster image processing (RIPping). JDF, on the other hand, is a non-proprietary XML (extensible markup language)-based production language that carries instructions and protocol as the job travels through the various stages of the workflow. It can link and refer to files used by multiple devices and provide automatic job reporting. In a word, says Adobe, in a white paper released on JDF functionality within its recently released Acrobat 7.0: "Whereas PostScript describes pages and PDF describes documents, JDF describes jobs."

According to James Mauro, Prinect product manager, Heidelberg USA, "Besides the openness of the format, JDF's function is similar to that of a hot folder, although it is far more intelligent because it knows the sequence in which job parts must be produced and does not release the job from one stage to the next until the appropriate time. JDF 'knows,' for example, that XYZ job is received as a PDF. It also knows that this PDF has to be preflighted, processed, printed, packaged, and delivered to the print buyer. JDF also is used for collecting and reporting job status and final production data for cost analysis in a print management system." While a PDF file, which can be very large—especially in packaging workflows—can contain the so-called metadata (job name, colors, etc.) used in the JDF, a JDF file would not contain a PDF.

"Potentially, JDF has an impact on the complete workflow—even before a PDF for the package or label exists," says Lieven Plettinck, packaging R&D manager at Esko-Graphics and chairman of the CIP4 JDF for Packaging Committee. For example, "It can be used in the communication between the end-customer and the MIS of the prepress house or converter. JDF Intent Resources can capture what the customer has in mind and feed that into the MIS. In the MIS, this information can be completed by CSRs and technical specialists. From the MIS, JDFs can be sent to the prepress floor with the actual processes and resources to be executed in the making of the final production files. Likewise, MIS instructions can be communicated to the finishing equipment."

The great enabler

In the broadest terms, therefore, if PDF can be understood as the "what," JDF is the "how." The use of JDF streamlines production by enabling RIPs, imagesetters, presses, finishing, and other equipment and software to speak a common language. In essence, Esko-Graphics' Hole explains, "JDF extends the functionality of a PDF workflow by using a global MIS structure to provide operators access to use the metadata from a file, providing everyone the history of a job as it progresses through the supply chain. JDF thus becomes the 'mechanism' for monitoring and distributing the job at each stage of the process."

"JDF promises … faster and higher quality services and more accurate production feedback in real time. While a job is being processed, a continual stream of job metadata can be fed into costing, billing, and MIS," Ranasinha says. "They not only deliver greater accuracy in cost and estimate determination by connecting production and management systems, but also more efficient and effective use of available resources."

In an ideal JDF scenario, explains Mike Rottenborn, vice president, customer service, Artwork Systems, all information about a job would be entered once and flow automatically throughout a workflow system, where it would be enhanced with additional status information and be ready for analysis after completion.

According to Ranasinha, JDF is really metadata describing the form, function, intent, and process of the actual file data. As such, he says, "it can describe every possible specification required to produce any type of job. Exact job specifications can be tailored to the type of work: for example, the number and description of colors, ink settings, deadlines, even shipping instructions." Moreover, he adds, "JDF certainly can be written into the PDF, such that the file itself creates the production workflow."

Esko-Graphics' Ian Hole further explains that JDF enables companies to "string" together pieces of various automated processes, based on the metadata contained in the PDF that describe a set of customer requirements. "The workflow will automatically go through these processes on behalf of the preferences of the customer, the converter, or any member of the supply chain."

Leslie Hepditch, marketing manager for Agfa :Apogee, cites two ways that JDF information can be appended to a PDF file and used to initiate the production sequence. "A JDF can be sent to an existing job ticket where the production workflow has been defined, whereupon the JDF file applies the parameters. When the JDF file itself contains the production plan information, it can initiate the production sequence."

Plettinck suggests, however, that in some cases it may be better to separate the content of a file (PDF) from its processing instructions (JDF). "In packaging and labels, the repurposing of digital assets like PDFs is quite common. A PDF describing a label can be printed today in large quantities using a flexo press. When a reprint order arrives, the label converter may decide to run the job on a digital press because the flexo line is fully occupied and the quantities of the reprint order are small."

JDF: Mmm, Mmm good for packaging

Today, says Plettinck, the most interesting applications in packaging and labels are in the area of MIS to prepress communication. "Communicating via an electronic job ticket enables printers to avoid errors that occur, for example, when operators type in the wrong bar code number. Avoiding errors is the biggest optimization possible in a packaging and labels workflow," he says.

JDF not only enables closer connectivity between prepress and accounting, order entry, asset management, archiving, and other business management systems, it can be used to fully automate the step-and-repeat process for many packaging applications.

"The JDF file can indicate the full stepped layout, even for ganged jobs containing multiple high-res designs, as well as press marks, color bars, etc.," Artworks' Rottenborn explains. "These JDF files can be produced by layout programs like Artwork Systems' ArtPro, PowerLayout, PowerStepper, and other off-the-shelf programs."

"Creating production step-and-repeat layouts is currently one of the primary uses of JDF in a packaging workflow," agrees Steve Miller, product manager, packaging workflow, Kodak. "A step-and-repeat layout created in Kodak's Pandora also can be submitted to multiple workflow products that support the JDF specification, providing greater flexibility in the exchange of files between trade shops and converters, or between multiple plant locations."

Likewise, states Agfa's Hepditch, "In Agfa's :ApogeeX for Packaging—and typically in packaging workflows—the JDF file begins by setting up the step-and-repeat and layout information," boosting productivity and streamlining production.

Aside from developments such as these (see "The Practical Uses of JDF in Packaging Workflows" on p. 16), however, JDF has been relatively slow to find its way into packaging workflows. Although the Packaging Committee of the Ghent PDF Workgroup has defined the integration of JDF information in PDF workflows as an "open issue," the reality is JDF specifications to date have focused more on commercial printing than on printing and converting. But there are signs that JDF's "Johnny-come-lately" status in the packaging world is changing.

On behalf of converters, says Hole, the CIP4 organization formed a JDF Packaging & Labels workgroup to develop bar code specifications; resolve a high-level definition of step-and-repeat; define the interfaces to conventional diecutting and folder/gluer devices; and develop media definitions.

Furthermore, says DALiM's Ranasinha, "The latest version of the JDF specification addresses some packaging-specific areas. Further upstream, JDF can be used in terms of having a JDF-based preflight profile driving a JDF-enabled preflight engine, such as that contained in DALiM Software applications."

Is it soup yet?

Enhancing a PDF workflow with JDF functionality has benefits for both designer/customer and print provider, according to Plettinck. "When the printer opens the PDF, all the necessary information is immediately loaded into the system without retyping. Printers can create JDF templates and make them available to customers who load them in their versions of the software. Designers then open the template or JDF form in Acrobat or InDesign and all the job elements that the printers manage via JDF are there for the designer to fill in."

PDF workflows let designers use any content creation software to make their projects and send to a printer in PDF, knowing the files will print accurately, Plettinck added.

"The hope is that everyone will be able to communicate and transmit details of a print job through digital workflows from creation to completion," Ranasinha says. "With JDF, everyone will be able to use the same standard set of descriptions, implementing a process that is totally independent of application, system, platform, even language."

"Printers probably don't care one way or the other if it's JDF or not, as long as the system works," says Heidelberg's Mauro. "But the reason to use JDF products is because of the potential to combine them into a workflow that is suitable for the type of work the printer is producing, whether it's publishing, packaging, or flexo. That is the goal of JDF."

by Jean-Marie Hershey. She is an author and editor specializing in the graphic communications industry, and can be reached at jmh@writehandcom.com