Kennesaw, Ga. - August 23, 2004 – Prinect, Heidelberg’s computer integrated manufacturing solution, will be a central feature of the company’s booth at Graph Expo and Converting Expo 2004. Visitors to Heidelberg’s exhibit area – located in booth #1000 – are invited to the Prinect Experience, a series of eight integrated workstations that will demonstrate to printers how they can employ CIM for highly efficient print production and how they can leverage the equipment that is already in their shops. Prinect is a family of unique workflow products that completely and seamlessly integrates the production and business management processes – from start to finish. The first standardized workflow, Prinect streamlines prepress and press functions to finishing, cutting, folding, stitching, quality assurance and even financial management. It integrates all levels of job processing. “The result is more efficient and profitable business operations,” said James Mauro, Heidelberg USA’s Prinect product manager. “Prinect Prepress Interface, alone can significantly reduce makeready, which can account for as much as one third of a printer’s total costs. Visitors to the Prinect Experience will learn firsthand how Prinect components help manage businesses better by evaluating costs, quantifying job performance and freeing up time and manpower to increase capacity. Prinect is a highly modular, scalable and open system that provides tailor-made solutions based on a customer’s needs. It is easy to apply and can be continuously expanded. The flexibility and reliability that Prinect provides gives companies a crucial competitive advantage that can be further enhanced thanks to the increasing JDF-compatibility of all components in the Prinect workflow. The Job Definition Format (JDF) is administered by the CIP4 consortium of major manufacturers in prepress, press and postpress, as well as printers and well-known industry organizations. JDF means that all components speak the same language, regardless of the manufacturer. That means Heidelberg’s Prinect equipment – such as Prinect Signa Station and Prinect MetaDimension – can be connected and work seamlessly and easily with products other than those provided by Heidelberg. “The bottom line is that Prinect saves time and money with less waste, lower costs, higher quality and faster turnaround times,” Mauro said. What you’ll see in the Prinect Experience: Prinect Prinance - The print management system that electronically delivers important job information to production and transparently integrates all processes in a printshop. This greatly supports the efforts needed to cultivate and extend customer relationships, and to boost the efficiency and effectiveness of costing, production preparations and planning, job handling, and decision-making at the management level. Prinect Signa Station - Prinect Signa Station introduces a new impositioning concept in which the folded sheet and print sheet are separated from each other to ensure maximum flexibility. This differentiation enables the user to easily reconfigure a job from a Speedmaster SM 74 to a Speedmaster SM 102 in only a few seconds. Prinect Signa Station also features extremely user-friendly operation, supported by a wizard that serves as a guide through the impositioning process step by step. Marks are set automatically and are dynamically adapted to the paper size and the printed area, eliminating the need to position individual marks. To reduce makeready times in the press and postpress stages, Prinect Signa Station supplies presetting data for Prinect Auto Register, as well as cutters, folders, and stitchers. Prinect Printready System 2.0 with MetaDimension - Provides the opportunity to map all the prepress tasks in a freely configurable, digital workflow and thus to automate them. Based entirely on the JDF standard, Prinect Printready simplifies and accelerates all prepress tasks, plans jobs more efficiently from start to finish and monitors the whole process centrally. Prinect Printready System 2.0 provides the basis for establishing a new prepress standard. Prinect CP2000 Center - The primary task of the Prinect CP2000 Center is to control the press with ease by accessing all the functions from the control console. It unites press operation, remote ink and register control and, depending on requirements, the collection of press operating data in a single control console. Its key feature is the touchscreen which can be used for making all entries and performing checks, including presetting upcoming jobs while the press is printing the current job. Prinect FCS 100 - Reducing makeready in finishing is as important as it is in the pressroom. Prinect FCS 100 software controls Compufold and Compustitch for Heidelberg folders and stitchers and is the perfect compliment to the Prinect workflow. Machine presetting data can be delivered directly to the equipment, saving the operator time, and also reducing the likelihood of what could be costly errors. Compucut – Compucut is software for externally creating cutting programs for Polar high-speed cutters. It generates all required presettings from CIP files and loads the correct cutting program into the machine. The result is significantly greater productivity from integrating cutters in Prinect. By saving time, Compucut lowers costs and enables more flexible production.