Industry leaders collaborate to drive and manage line of monochrome and color digital presses with common workflow process

TORONTO - Kodak and Konica Minolta will demonstrate fully managed monochrome and color digital press solutions for commercial print and graphic communications professionals at Canada’s largest print and graphics communications show. Konica Minolta will showcase two new KODAK CREO Servers driving its new and existing bizhub presses, connected to KODAK PRINERGY Workflow 6 at its booth #1260 at Graphics Canada, November 21-23.

First shown earlier this year at Print 13 in Chicago, two new CREO Servers, the IC-309 and IC-309m, will drive the Konica Minolta bizhub full color presses and bizhub PRO C1060/C1070 models. Developed on completely new front-end architecture, these servers combine dozens of new productivity-focused features with the same robustness and usability existing customers have appreciated for years.

Through this relationship with Konica Minolta, the first ever CREO server for monochrome production devices, the IC-309m, was developed to drive the bizhub 951, 1052 and 1250 black-and-white presses. This collaboration has yielded the benefit of a common workflow process regardless of the device’s color capabilities.

“The CREO Server architecture has benefited our customers with color devices for years, and is now extended for monochrome systems with a common user experience,” says Chris O’Connor, Kodak’s Director of Business Development for Unified Workflow Solutions. “This new, unique connectivity is a big shift for our customers, eliminating the need to manage different types of traditional and digital presses as islands—whether light production, full production, color or black and white.”

“The 20-year relationship between Kodak and Konica Minolta is represented at Graphics Canada in these market-leading solutions. We see this connectivity as an integral part of our customers’ needs and representative of our continued commitment to the print industry,” says John Steip, National Product Manager, Production Print, Konica Minolta Business Solutions (Canada) Ltd.

Customers also will be able to see the integration between PRINERGY Workflow 6, the CREO Servers and Konica Minolta digital presses. The demonstration will show how job intent captured during the order process can be used to make dynamic decisions about where, how and when to process jobs—automatically. Show attendees will see how this connectivity provides a complete view of the entire production environment to track and monitor all jobs, tasks and output devices in real time.         

“The new Workspace interface in PRINERGY Workflow 6 allows for quick, real-time status and access to output device information for jobs in production,” says O’Connor. “This level of integrated control and efficiency over digital and offset production for customers from a single interface brings the ability to control jobs in production to a level never seen before.”