PrintVis is JDF-Certified
What is JDF you may ask. Similar to ISO certification in concept, JDF (Job Definition Format) certification offers cross-platform, common integration and process automation, answering the simple question, “What should one common job ticket for the print industry look like?” With JDF, we have a single common language to support the life cycle of a print job in all its possible aspects, from estimation to prepress to production to post-production and everything in between.
JDF information is ideal for communication among the various equipment in your production facility. But with it you can also communicate with other print houses, vendors and customers.
As the standard file format for the printing industry, JDF simplifies information exchange among various systems and provides detailed information, including design and workflow details, as well as Job Messaging Format (JMF) signaling, so you can track a project from start to finish.
“JDF has given our organization the ability to make an interface with everything we need our MIS to track, easily.” — Customer
With over 10 years of JDF Certification and CIP4 membership, PrintVis knows the many benefits that standardization brings to process automation in the print industry.
277% – Average ROI for JDF-enabled automation
480% – Average ROI for fully automated, end-to-end automation
6979 – Average labor hours saved/year by printers who implement JDF
(Sources: InfoTrends’ Production Software Investment Outlook and CIP4 CIPPI Case Studies)
Long-standing Member of the CIP4 Organization
PrintVis is recognized for having surpassed many years of JDF Certification and CIP4 membership – actually since 2003. This puts PrintVis into a rather elite group of companies around the world who know the many benefits that standardization brings to the business world, with ongoing contribution to the CIP4 organization, JDF Specification, and process automation in the print industry.
What is standardization?
The process of developing and implementing technical standards, standardization helps to maximize compatibility, interoperability, safety, repeatability, or quality. It can also facilitate commoditization of formerly custom processes.
Why JDF and JMF?
In years past multiple software solutions were used for various needs in your business; each with its own interface (requiring training) and database. Each department would work “internally” and communication between the groups usually involved paperwork. This also led to a tremendous amount of duplicate data entry – and wasted time.
For example, customer or supplier data is needed for your estimating department, your shipping department, your billing department, not to mention marketing and sales. Closing financial periods usually meant many hours of manual work, painstakingly gathering data to balance the books.
But these disparate interfaces are typically maintained, each by its own supplier – without an across-the-board standard. So – even a small software upgrade in one could necessitate redevelopment of all interfaces – causing problems with hardware and/or operation system compatibility. Having your business hamstrung by such issues was a regular expectation.
For these integrations, cooperation between the integration partners is essential. There needs to be a standard defined which all parties agree to support. Integration for commercial printers is very often reduced to a single definition known as JDF . In fact there are other possible and reasonable integrations but JDF is still the globally-recognized standard.
The JDF integration makes it possible to merge the data flow of administration and production. This is important to avoid unnecessary data input, to provide machine presetting data and to get workflow feedback about the job status and job costing situation. This works for the company’s internal workflow and to read data of external jobs and create these jobs in the internal system as well (subcontractors or partner companies).
This is one area in PrintVis where our emphasis on precision truly shines.
JDF implementations are not Plug-and-Play. Pain points for JDF integration lie not in the technical part, as the standard definition for the JDF is clear and each certified supplier knows which “language” to use for communication. Rather, the challenge for the project management team is to define the goals of such integration. This is needed to be defined and written – to confirm with all JDF partners that this workflow/data is supported – and to define a workflow internally for the company (not technical).
This makes it possible to process an integrated workflow. But clearly the change and optimization of the administrative workflow requires a strong partner – both software and implementation wise.
The Job Definition Format is the industry specification designed to facilitate process automation and the integration of different applications and systems in and around the Graphic Arts industry. JDF also enables the integration of business management and job planning applications into the production workflow. Through adherence to process standards exemplified by JMF and JDF, industries such as print can automate portions of workflow and thereby optimize production. By standardizing our software, PrintVis takes a very similar approach, in recognizing the common needs of companies engaged in the discrete manufacturing world we call print.
JDF is based on the W3C’s Extensible Markup Language (XML), ensuring maximum interoperability between different platforms and ready interaction with Internet systems. More information is available here.
JDF and the JDF logo are registered trademarks of the CIP4 Organization.
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