InSoft Automation has been awarded the 2016 InterTech Technology Award for its flagship product Imp. This award, presented by the Printing Industries of America, each year recognizes innovative technologies that are expected to have a significant impact on the way print is produced. Imp was recognized for its level of intelligence, automation and ability to fit into a wide variety of workflows. Imp represents the cutting edge in intelligent layout, imposition, ganging and die management across multiple printing technologies like offset, digital, VSOP and large format.

"This prestigious award recognizes the breakthrough technology that simplifies complexity in day to day life of printers across the world and translates into improved profits due to material and machine usage optimization", says Santosh Mulay, Vice President of InSoft.

Imp is a versatile software that automates creation of cost based print-ready layouts. The level of automation is impressive, but the standout feature is the ability to optimize layouts across a variety of job types (from packaging and labels to magazines) and print processes (offset, digital and wide format). Moreover, rectangular flat jobs and die cut jobs can be ganged separately or together.

"The InterTech judges were impressed with Imp’s innovative features, its flexibility, and its accessibility to printers of all sizes", said Jim Workman, Vice President of Printing Industries of America’s Center for Technology and Research.

With Imp software, printers do not need to invest in and maintain multiple products from different vendors, but can run an integrated workflow for different job types and printing/finishing technologies instead, considerably reducing complexity in their daily operations.

Imp is the only software that handles a wide range of jobs with a wide range of printing methods. The benefits of the software that can automatically compute and generate cost effective layouts for all of the following scenarios are compelling:

• Ganging of folding cartons
• Optimizing rectangular or die-cut jobs on a flat-bed or roll-to-roll large format press
• Gang all types of jobs together on both sheet-fed and web-fed offset presses, including variable sleeve offset press (VSOP). The software will automatically suggest the optimal sleeve length to be used.
• Create imposition plans for books on complex multi-web presses with inline slitters and folders

With such an automated print layout planning software, another major benefit that will be realized by the customer is quick and accurate estimation and quote generation. With all the intelligence built into the software, an estimator can, without much knowledge of production, generate accurate layouts and use them in his/her estimates.

Unique technology embedded in Imp

• Built-in Intelligence that automatically plans and creates print layouts. Not only is the assembled sheet cost effective, it also ensures that all operations, including finishing operations are carried out correctly.
• Holistic Optimization: The software recognizes that paper utilization is not a goal in itself. Other process costs accrued while printing, guillotine cutting, die-making, die cutting, binding are also taken into account
• A new approach ensures that a great amount of problems is solved, and complexity is simplified for customers by offering a single interface for book imposition, flat jobs and nested layouts for die-cut jobs. Workflows required to create print layouts for different types of jobs do not need to be different. The CAD operator, using CAD application and the imposition operator in pre-press use nearly the same workflows.

Imp software has enabled printers not only to automate planning and layout creation, but also to quote lower to their customers retaining their margins and thus winning more business and grow.