Trust in your workflow is good, but control down to the lowest level of production is better. The Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung came to this conclusion and will, in addition to ppi's tracking solution ppiTrack, use a browser-based, optimized smartphone application developed by ppi Media, a subsidiary of manroland.

ppiTrack continuously tracks the entire planning and production line in the ppi workflow in Heidelberg – from the delivery of ads and editorial content to plate production. The tracking solution shows at a glance where critical or acute situations are likely to occur or deadlines will be violated. "The smartphone module for ppiTrack enables us to monitor the entire newspaper production not only from our office, but also in the field," says Michael Gindele, prepress production manager at Heidelberger Mediengestaltung HVA GmbH.

One of ppiTrack's great features is its ergonomic drill-down menu which provides an extremely clear overview, particularly in the mobile application. Users can navigate per fingertip between a display of highly aggregated data and detailed information, including a preview. In the overall view, all print products are reduced to one-line bar with key information on production times. An icon – which can be either green, gray or red – at the front of the bar shows the overall status of all pages belonging to the print product. Critical situations can be detected and by zooming in, possible causes can be identified without losing time. To be able to pinpoint problems effectively and to take countermeasures, additional details like planning data or planned respectively actual conflicts on pages, their part-pages and ads can now be displayed via the page dummy. "Down to the lowest production level, no critical situation goes unnoticed with ppiTrack and our browser-based mobile module," says Claus Harders, Senior Vice President of Customer Projects at ppi Media.