Openness, Connectivity, Productivity

Progressive package printers are finding new ways to open new levels of communication with their customers and attract new business. Digital workflows—and the Internet—are helping.

ADVANCED DIGITAL WORKFLOWS, sporting Internet collaborative tools, are significant time savers for prepress departments—and are targeting the package printing environment with fervor.

Gee Ranasinha, director of marketing at Dalim Software, reports one way a package printing operation can differentiate itself from its competition is by offering its customers the advantages of a more digitized workflow and online collaborative services.

One such workflow is the DALiM MiSTRAL PACK, which provides converters a complete view of their entire prepress production. It also offers converters the ability to plan, softproof, nest, and automate a number of jobs. It is totally customizable and the interface remains very intuitive.

DALiM MiSTRAL PACK also automates the communication between a company's various production departments such as prepress, customer marketing, and planning. After the workflow generates a file that is automatically made available, it can trigger an e-mail message to the customer to check and confirm the job online.

"The Internet provides the communications backbone to provide information globally, providing the communications channels for DALiM MiSTRAL PACK. This allows clients, brand managers, printers—whoever—worldwide, to view at any time and from wherever they are, the state of progress of their packaging projects, in real time," reports Ranasinha. "As deadlines become ever tighter, customers want the ability to track their production themselves, 24/7, rather than relying on customer service."

The power pack

Prinergy Powerpack is Creo's automated workflow for package printing. It is a fully-integrated and automated workflow management system designed specifically to meet the unique needs of offset and flexographic converters and trade shops. Based on the Prinergy technology infrastructure and open industry standards such as Adobe Extreme, PDF, JDF, PJTF, and Oracle, Prinergy Powerpack creates a predictable and reliable manufacturing process that automates steps, reduces errors, and streamlines operations.

Prinergy Powerpack enables team collaboration, empowering greater communication within a prepress division across shifts and departments, and to external clients. The fully integrated Oracle database tracks every step of a packaging job as it flows both within and outside of a facility, ensuring clear communication and reporting.

Synapse InSite, an Internet portal into the prepress production environment, is a key feature of Prinergy Powerpack. "The Internet allows easy connectivity between the creative side, the print buyers, and the converters, so they can all sit on the same digital network and understand each other's requirements much better," reports to Steve Miller, packaging market specialist for Creo. "Synapse InSite enables Web access to stakeholders outside of a prepress facility, providing the benefits of remote proofing, job status, and file approval and sharing to registered users over a secured Internet connection.

"This functionality," he continues, "allows users to upload and download job data and submit annotations and approve packaging files in real time, using the benefits of PDF and the Internet. The result is maximum visibility into the workflow and quicker turnaround time."

The biggest single trend in packaging is the move to digital processes, which is affecting trade shops and converters of all sizes, according to Miller. Also, the market itself is shifting. He reports that some converters are bringing prepress functions in-house. At the same time, many consumer product companies (CPCs) have such complex requirements that they are relying more heavily on their trade shops to manage their digital workflows and assets. So the role of the trade shop may be shifting from file production toward data management.

The drupa directives

At drupa 2004, Agfa and Esko-Graphics showed the results of their close cooperation to link Esko-Graphics' Scope packaging pre-production tools with Agfa's production automation servers through PDF and JDF. Both companies strongly promote the use of industry standards to allow their customers to build multi-vendor workflow solutions. The mixed workflows demonstrate the power of PDF as the preferred data carrier for graphics in packaging applications.

"With this cooperation, Agfa systems seamlessly integrate through industry standards with dedicated tools for the packaging industry," reports Kris Vangeel, Agfa's packaging business director. "Agfa is not directing its development of packaging solutions towards creative tools, but rather strives to integrate its products with those from market leaders in packaging design solutions. This allows packaging prepress professionals to build their prepress configuration completely according to their specific needs, combining the components of their choice."

Then there is Esko-Graphics' Scope

"Scope for Packaging is broken down to very specific market segments to fulfill the particular needs of each segment, such as tag and label or corrugated," reports Mark Vanover, director of marketing, Esko-Graphics North America. "The Scope for Packaging workflow covers a wide range of functions, from job and product specification, through graphic and structural design and expert pre-production operations, to platemaking for printing and toolmaking for converting. Scope adds capabilities for project coordination, digital asset management, and distributed proofing and approval, enabling the many partners and stakeholders across the entire supply chain to communicate and collaborate globally, effectively, and in real time."

The printing industry is undergoing fundamental changes. Packaging buyers are looking where they can next eliminate costs from the supply chain. The major print buyers—large CPCs and, increasingly, international retailers—go beyond setting deadlines and cost and quality targets; they now participate actively in the project management, revision, and approval processes. Having dealt with globalization and consolidation for many years, packaging companies rely heavily on distributed collaborative workflows.

Scope can be configured with WebCenter 4.0, the collaboration and asset management server within Scope's end-to-end workflow. WebCenter is used to ensure that all partners in the packaging supply chain can efficiently and accurately share digital information. WebCenter 4.0 provides secure project and file management to the desktop—anywhere there is Web access. Projects in WebCenter can contain any type of document, including CAD files, graphic files, spreadsheets, proposals, purchase orders, or customer specifications.

e-Proofing the package

Kodak Polychrome Graphics' (KPG's) monitor proofing portfolio, which includes the Matchprint Virtual Proofing System and the RealTimeProof suite of products, is targeting today's packaging environments. KPG's Monitor and Remote Proofing solutions remove time, cost, and distance from the proofing workflow—particularly important factors in a package printing world that faces deadlines tied to product launches, introductions, stock replenishing, along with other issues unique to the package printer.

RealTimeProof is a suite of Web-based proofing solutions providing accurate image quality for monitor and remote proofing. Using patented streaming technology, called Pixels-on-Demand, high-resolution files can be viewed in seconds, even over a dial-up connection. Users need only a Web browser on a Mac or PC and a free downloadable plug-in to proof their original files from anywhere, at any time. The GATF InterTech award winning RealTimeProof technology is now integrated in workflows from Heidelberg, EFI, Esko-Graphics, and Artwork Systems.

It may take several years for every automated workflow and client communication trend to develop fully in the packaging market—Internet collaboration, remote proofing, and the use of fully automated workflows that are powered by Internet tools and connectivity. However, with certainty, the developments are underway.

Marie Alonso has been covering the printing industry since 1994 and is the editorial director of PrintWriter.com. She welcomes responses at 856-216-9956 or marie@printwriter.com.