November 10, 2004 -- The General Meeting of the CIP 4 organization (www.cip4.org) held in October 2004 during Graph Expo in Chicago, endorsed the roles of three employees of Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG (Heidelberg). Jörg Bauer, Vice President Prinect Product Management at Heidelberg, continues as a member of the Advisory Board of the organization. The Advisory Board makes all the strategic decisions regarding CIP 4 and the further development of the JDF standard. The members of the Advisory Board also endorsed the roles of Rainer Prosi as "Chief Technical Officer" and Christian Anschütz as "Membership Officer" on the Board of Directors responsible for the day-to-day running of the organization. In his role at Heidelberg, Rainer Prosi works on the development of workflow modules, while Christian Anschütz is a member of the Prinect Product Management team. "Heidelberg’s strong representation within the CIP 4 organization underlines the company’s commitment to establishing and developing JDF as a standard within the print media industry. Only the CIP 4 organization, in which all key manufacturers in the industry are involved, is in a position to ensure JDF gains long-term acceptance – a fact demonstrated in the 1990s when the organization established the Print Production Format (PPF) as the industry standard, and we have the same goal for JDF", said Advisory Board member Jörg Bauer, underlining the importance of CIP 4. From initiative to standard – history of the Job Definition Format (JDF) Automated production workflows with cost transparency secure competitive advantages for printshops. This goal can be achieved by integrating the data of all systems and machines involved in the production process. The quest to create automated and transparent production processes goes back a long way. In order to make the data generated within a particular production step available to successive production steps, Heidelberg commissioned the IGD (Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics) in Darmstadt to develop the Print Production Format (PPF) in the early 1990s and in 1995 transferred responsibility for further development and market launch to the new "CIP 3" (International Cooperation for the Integration of Prepress, Press and Postpress) industry consortium founded by Heidelberg, Agfa, MAN and Adobe, a joint organization with the goal of developing industry standards. While PPF describes the characteristics of a sheet, it does not describe the print job itself – a key requirement for realizing potential reductions in makeready times and controlling production using management software. Heidelberg therefore initiated development of the Job Definition Format (JDF) in time for drupa 2000. The collaboration with three competitors resulted in the creation of an electronic job ticket. The unveiling of the first draft at drupa 2000 caused a stir worldwide and expectations ran high. In January 2001, the international CIP4 organization (International Cooperation for the Integration of Processes in Prepress, Press and Postpress) took over responsibility for further development and market launch. CIP4 was a reformed version of the former CIP3 consortium with 41 members. The triumphant progress of the JDF electronic job ticket has continued unabated ever since. The format ensured that drupa 2004 went down in history as the "JDF drupa". As part of the Prinect Experience Tour, Heidelberg presented the Prinect integrated workflow system which is fully based on JDF. The tour, which received its 1000th group of visitors little over halfway through the trade show, demonstrated the creation of a virtual print job from prepress to press and postpress. The importance of CIP4, whose membership has increased over the last few years to over 270, has grown alongside the development of JDF. Nearly all key producers of machines and IT for the print media industry are now members. Numerous users have also joined the organization, making up a good fifth of the membership. This was all made possible by the introduction of statutes and the establishment of strong leadership bodies. A membership model involving different scales also keeps annual membership fees for users to a minimum, thereby supporting the development of JDF linked to practical needs. Manufacturers form the financial basis of CIP4, either as Full or Partner Members.