September 11, 2002 -- At this year’s Seybold Conference in San Francisco, Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG (Heidelberg) announced the launch of an entirely JDF-based preprint workflow for the fall of this year. The new workflow is a complete Heidelberg development and will be known as “Prinect Printready System”. The new workflow solution automates all prepress production stages and also includes transparent data forwarding to press and postpress. As part of Heidelberg’s workflow management system Prinect, the Prinect Printready System also enables the printshop’s production and commercial workflows to be harmonized. The new JDF workflow is modular and can be scaled to suit the printshop’s needs. The Prinect Printready System will go on show for the first time at GraphExpo, being held from October 6 through 9, 2002 in Chicago, USA. Prinect manages and optimizes all print specific process steps from prepress via print production to postpress. At the same time, Prinect integrates all business related needs thus ensuring process reliability, flexibility and transparency. As part of Prinect, the Prinect Printready System is the world’s first preprint workflow to be based entirely on JDF, thereby making it possible to map and automate all the tasks of the prepress stage in a single, freely-configurable, digital workflow. Modular automation even for smaller printshops The Prinect Printready system uses a client / server architecture. The automated process stages are defined on the workstation using the Printready Cockpit software and process the individual jobs via templates on the server. Operator intervention is possible at any time using its own applications with extended functions. The new solution is fully modular, in line with Prinect’s basic principle, so that individual components can be selected and added to the overall system rapidly and easily in line with specific requirements. As a result, the Prinect Printready System is of particular interest to smaller companies, since it now gives them the opportunity to define and implement a level of automation that satisfies their needs. New components are released for use by entering the relevant license key. This saves the user from having to carry out time-consuming and complex installations. With each new module of the Printready System, the level of automation increases, and with it the degree of reliability in production. The future starts here The Prinect Printready System from Heidelberg lays the foundations for the next generation of automated, modular, fully transparent workflow management with open interfaces. End-to-end use of JDF will mean that in future all process steps within the printshop will be connected up and customers and suppliers will also be integrated into a far more reliable production process. The Prinect Printready System is therefore the definitive platform for digital and automated prepress production. In future it will also be able to control the digital presses Speedmaster DI, Quickmaster DI and NexPress. Within Heidelberg’s Prinect concept, the Printready System will in future supply the data for all downstream production stages and will adopt information from production control systems in the form of JDF.