You’ll also hear a lot about cloud based services at Drupa, though this is really just a new name for a long established concept of offering remotely hosted software and storage. Previously the term was the clunkier but more descriptive SAAS (software as a service). 

Web-to-print and MIS developers have offered this for years – it’s a way to get customers onto your system without their needing to install expensive servers and the IT staff to run them. At Drupa we’ll see other functions moving into cloud services. 

HP is making a splash at Drupa with its grandiosely named PrintOS. This is not an operating system but rather a set of cloud-based services for HP Indigo and other digital press users. Details of how it will work are still somewhat up in the air (appropriate for the cloud), but it seems that it will function like a cross between the Adobe Creative Cloud and a professional print version of the Apple Store, where you can access and run an increasing choice of applications, sometimes temporarily by only paying for them when you need them. It will include both HP’s own applications and approved third-party apps. Initially these will include data cleansing, web-to-print, marketing asset management, cross-media services, and workflow automation. 

Ricoh is planning something similar called TotalFlow Cloud Suite, which likewise will be a hosted portfolio of subscription software services comprising Ricoh’s own and approved third-party products. 

Enfocus, whose Switch technology allows users to build their own workflows, is introducing Appstore, which allows them to buy functions and components from other users. It expects to have 50 online by Drupa. It’s also implementing HTML5 to allow web browser inspection and commenting on a Switch workflow.

Hybrid Software, a Belgian based workflow integrations specialist, introduced its Cloudflow multi-vendor component workflow in 2013. At Drupa it’s being extended with Cloudflow Share, a web-based workflow that connects multiple local workflows and offers various pre-press functions. Also new will be MyCloudflow, which lets companies purchase cloud-based capacity rather than buying a licence and configuring their own system. 

Touch sensitive

One of the phrases you hear a lot from marketing people is ‘reducing touchpoints’. Underneath the marketing waffle it’s an important trend, describing how automation is increasing throughout the production and admin processes. Reducing touchpoints means that human operators don’t need to re-enter data or manage routine jobs. The idea is that this frees them to use their skills and experience where it matters, such as fixing problems in incoming files that need a human decision, or deciding when to re-prioritise a job, maybe because the client needs it in a hurry, or switching to another press so it can later go on a more available finishing line. Another way of looking at it is that you can get more done with fewer people, which as ever is fine as long as it’s not your job being automated out of existence. 

We looked at a good example of touchpoint reduction in the last issue of PrintWeek, talking to Rob Plampton, joint managing director of IPS in Guernsey. His firm uses the OpenFlow cloud-based production workflow to automate the reception, processing and administration of thousands of short-run digital jobs per day.

OpenFlow will also be the first app available in HP’s PrintOS. It was originally developed on a non-cloud form for Precision Printing in London. Managing director Gary Peeling says that is vital to have automation when dealing with large numbers of jobs on a regular basis. “Most PSPs are doing 40 to 50 orders per day. As you start moving into print-on-demand you start to see 100 to 300 orders per day. It isn’t very long before printers are looking to manage 1,000 a day. Once you get up to 200 to 300, old human intervention in terms of traffic on the shop floor, just doesn’t work.”

End-to-end integration and automation is really the logical progression of automated workflows for pre-press, which started to appear in the 1990s. Heidelberg took this a step further with its Prinect network, which can connect most aspects of a factory production workflow from pre-press through printing to finishing, with links to third-party MIS (or the Heidelberg-owned CERM labelling MIS). A new digital front-end (DFE) introduced in 2015 allows both digital and offset workflows to be integrated. 

The Prinect Smart Automation Module automatically determines production paths based on job data and production information. This is being extended at Drupa to handle a wider range of jobs and to set up workflows in advance that are triggered when the artwork file is loaded. The company will promote the concept at Drupa as the ‘Smart Print Shop’.

EFI is also making a big thing about end-to-end automation and will showcase this at Drupa. It calls its concept EFI Connect, which is scalable and in some aspects cloud-based. It draws on the company’s experience with MIS (it has spent years buying up other developers, most recently the UK’s Shuttleworth Business Systems) and with its Fiery family of DFEs. 

Nick Benkovich, EFI’s senior director of portfolio product management, explains the ideas behind Connect: “What we are looking at is allowing workflows to become somewhat device and output agnostic, so the choice can be made based on the run length or requirement of the job, but the management of the job is done in exactly the same way. More importantly in some ways, the print buyers’ interface to that world is identical.”

Users can start small and work up, he says. Organisation is a key aspect: “As the number of pieces of kit grows, scheduling becomes critical. Especially if you have a digital press producing some jobs, and some offset presses, but they share finishing facilities. You need to be able to schedule them together, rather than only scheduling offset work and forgetting that the digital presses also need the shared finishing kit.”

All quiet on the JDF front

What we’re not hearing much about for Drupa is JDF, the XML-based job definition format that can transfer job information between all sorts of previously incompatible proprietary production platforms. It was announced at Drupa 2000 and was the hottest topic at Drupa 2004. 

Although JDF is widely used and still being extended, it’s never fulfilled the early goal of plug-and-play integration that anyone could do. Keith McMurtrie, managing director of MIS developer Tharstern, says this is because implementing it is hard work. “A lot of it works, but there are still a lot of differences from vendor to vendor,” he says. “The question is, whether JDF is a standard or not. I can create a JDF and put it into three or four different workflows and get a subtly different result every time.” 

Finishing manufacturer Horizon developed its own bindery network system, pXnet, some years ago. This uses proprietary links to let its finishers share data at an advanced level, with centralised set-up through the Bindery Control Management System. JDF lets it to talk to third-party products and networks. 

Now Muller Martini is working on an automated concept that it calls Finishing 4.0, promising demonstrations of touchless workflows at Drupa. It uses the Connex workflow to link its own products and JDF/JMF to connect to third-party systems and MIS. For instance Connex includes automatic imposition, which can be linked to digital printing as well as the company’s own Sigmaline automated digital book production lines. 

Pre-press RIP-workflows for processing PDF files haven’t changed enormously since the last Drupa, with the established players remaining the same: Agfa, ECRM, EFI, Esko, Fujifilm, Heidelberg, Kodak/Creo, Screen and Xerox. Since the last Drupa we’ve mostly seen evolutionary changes. EFI and Creo still tend to dominate the digital press front-end market, with Xerox offering its FreeFlow Print Server alongside these. 

Ricoh has offered a choice of EFI Fiery or Creo on its presses but last year announced its own DFE, called TotalFlow Server and will introduce this at Drupa. This can link to Kodak’s Prinergy workflow and Heidelberg’s Prinect networks for broader automation functions. 

The main underlying PDF processing technologies are still Adobe’s APPE and the UK’s own Global Graphics, with its Harlequin RIP. Adobe’s 2013 APPE3 introduced Mercury scalable multi-processing technology (first used in Fujifilm’s XMF 6.0 for its JetPress 720S inkjet press) and its current implementations can process PDF/VT with variable data.

Global Graphics technology is used by HP Indigos and T-series webs in their SmartStream front-ends, but Global Graphics’ only other major digital print user is Xitron, which mostly drives small toner printers. 

With this in mind Global Graphics is introducing Digital Print Optimizer, a screening technology it says gives a considerable quality boost to high-speed inkjet presses. Once optimised for a particular press model it can be built into a screening engine that will work with APPE-based front-ends as well as Harlequin. 

RIP performance is coming back into the spotlight at Drupa as we see new generations of larger format, higher resolution and higher-speed digital presses. They need a lot of grunt if they are going to process fully variable data at full speed. This was highlighted in 2014 when EFI announced a powerful Fiery implementation for Landa’s B1 digital presses (although these still aren’t shipping). HP will also need a speedy RIP for its forthcoming ‘B1’ Indigo 50000, and the forthcoming double-resolution 1,600x1,600dpi B2 Indigo 12000. Xeikon’s 1,200 dpi, 60m/min 500mm Trillium One liquid toner web press will also need a more powerful implementation of the company’s X-800 DFE. 

Since the 1980s computer-driven design, e-commerce, pre-press and automation have revolutionised the printing industry. Today these form the backbone of efficient production, though their very familiarity makes them less visible. Drupa 2016 will demonstrate that there’s still scope for important advances. The message is: look but don’t touch.