Düsseldorf, Germany (June 4th, 2008) - The International Cooperation for the Integration of the Processes in Prepress, Press and Postpress (CIP4) Organization today announced the winners of the 2008 Jürgen Schönhut Memorial CIP4 International Print Production Innovation (CIPPI) Awards.  The CIPPI awards are given annually to the applicant printer, publisher or prepress service with the most compelling case study in three topical categories and four regions. The winners are:

* Metzgerdruck GmbH, Obrigheim, Germany - First Place, Best cost/benefit realization and improvement in efficiency as a result of process automation implementation
* Cox Target Media, Inc., Largo, Florida, USA - Second Place, Best cost/benefit realization and improvement in efficiency as a result of process automation implementation
* Associates Graphic Services, Wilmington, Delaware, USA - First Place, Biggest improvement in quality production & customer responsiveness as a result of process automation
* Cox Target Media, Inc., Largo, Florida, USA - Second Place, Biggest improvement in quality production & customer responsiveness as a result of process automation
* Print Plaza AG, Düsseldorf, Germany - Most innovative use of process automation technology in an implementation
* Southern Colour (Vic) Pty Ltd, Keysborough, Victoria, Australia - Best Process Automation Implementation - Asia/Pacific
* Print Plaza AG, Düsseldorf, Germany - Best Process Automation Implementation - Europe
* Cox Target Media, Inc., Largo, Florida, USA - Best Process Automation Implementation - North America
* Pragati OffSet Pvt. Ltd., Hyderabad, India - Best Process Automation Implementation - Emerging Markets

Winning the category of Best cost/benefit, Metzgerdruck is a family owned digital and commercial printer. Supported by alphagraph team GmbH and Heidelberger Druckmaschinen    AG they sought to eliminate down time, long press times and reduce overtime. Metzgerdruck implemented end-to-end process automation, eliminating a great deal of costs in a three-phase project that began in 2005, resulting in a five year ROI of 1271.88%. CIPPI Review Panel Judge John Leininger of Clemson University said of Metzgerdruck's application, "They were very specific about how they calculated the projected totals. I like that they were detailed enough to say what happened to each employee."

Winning awards in three categories, Cox Target Media, combined the operations of three printing plants into one new plant, reducing labor 75% and reducing cycle time from four days to eight hours. Cox was supported by a team of vendors, including Muller Martini, Goss International, Bowe Bell + Howell, Kodak, Burgess Industries and Daifuku America Inc. in this $200,000,000 installation. This implementation includes JDF integration with corporate SAP ERP systems and includes numerous innovations such as automated plate delivery from the imagesetters to the presses, hands-off finishing and collating, mail sorting, and much more. "In my opinion this is the most integrated automated printing plant in existence anywhere," said CIPPI Review Panel Judge, Bill Lamparter of Printcom Consulting.  "The production philosophy is an example of what a 21st century printing plant should be like."

Print Plaza, winning Most innovative and Best in Europe, is a unique company that has five separate, but fully automated printing companies as its suppliers and collaborators. These printers, all previous CIPPI award winners, include Köller+Nowak, Druckhaus Berlin-Mitte, Mediengruppe UNIVERSAL, Kraft Druck und Verlag, and Tahnge Printing. With support from Hiflex GmbH, Koenig und Bauer AG, and Kodak, Print Plaza offers an online print shop that operates 24-hours per day, seven days a week. For printers, Print Plaza offers the ability to minimize or eliminate costs for sales, commissions, and administration, and simultaneously, win new markets with minimal effort. Customers can produce smaller orders at a competitive price, which are obtained automatically, and once they enter an order, the distribution of the job to one of the printers is based on product type, print run and/or ZIP code of the delivery address, all managed by a decision table. "Fantastic web-to-print project!
Far beyond the competition," said JDF Review Panel Judge Patrick Cahuet of 1Prime|Concept. "Print Plaza demonstrates a very innovative business model; a web-to-print market with a network using HIFLEX, Kodak and a web-to-print portal, and printers running KBA and Man and Heidelberg presses!"

"It is interesting that Associate Graphic Services, when deciding between labor and automation, picked automation in order to provide support for a new customer," said JDF CIPPI Reviewer Tetsuo Kimura, President of Printtechno. "And it is even more interesting that their choice resulted in a higher level of customer responsiveness and higher profitability."

Southern Colour is a rapidly expanding company with a focus on high quality printing for medium-to-large quantities. They started a long term implementation product with no MIS system or facilities for online customer communications, and their throughput, although reliable, was becoming too slow. Supported by alphagraph team GmbH and Heidelberg Australia, they have begun an end-to-end process automation implementation, with automated prepress, press setup, and enhanced online customer communications. They are now producing on average of 250% more CTP plates per month with 30% less staff, and have experienced a vast reduction in time and consumables in relation to proofing "This is an example of a company that views automation as a change in the way they do business, and keeps expanding into new areas with the process," said Leininger. "They have legacy equipment and have intelligently prepared a long-term automation program, beginning in 2002 and ending in 2009, during which
they have smartly phased-in automation, gaining many benefits, while maintaining growth and production."

Pragati Offset is the first winner of the Emerging markets award. Prior to implementation the company used a home-grown MIS for front office operations such as estimating, order entry, and billing, but job planning was still done manually. They wanted to move to automated job planning, eliminate re-keying, and introduce built-in parameters to eliminate manual planning errors. With support from EskoArtwork and Lithotechnics, Pragati Offset eliminated incorrect impositions and increased production speed, created clearer printouts of layouts for the operators, made old order imposition diagrams available in the database, - all benefits that made management of operations easier. They even integrated the exchange of JDF production data with corporate SAP ERP systems. "They made an efficient integration of their systems in a short amount of time," said CIPPI Review Panel Judge Stephan Jaeggi of PrePress-Consulting. "And their application of SAP interconnectivity with data coming to
and from the Metrix planning and imposition system is a great example of how JDF opens the door to new possibilities."

Any printer, prepress service or publisher may apply for the CIPPI awards. Awards are determined by a Review Panel of judges without affiliation to any vendor, printer, prepress service or publisher. The five Review Panel judges are:
* Patrick Cahuet of 1Prime|Concept (France)
* Stephan Jaeggi of PrePress-Consulting (Switzerland)
* Tetsuo Kimura of PrinTechno, Inc. (Japan)
* William C. Lamparter of PrintCom Consulting Group (USA)
* John Leininger of Clemson University (USA)
* The 2008 CIPPI award winning case-study case studies may be downloaded at www.cip4.org/cippi/ where you can also get more information on the CIPPI awards program. The CIPPI award is named after the late Jürgen Schönhut of the Fraunhofer Institute in Darmstadt Germany. Mr. Schönhut was a founding member of CIP4 whose contribution was instrumental in creating both CIP4 and its predecessor, the CIP3 Consortium. (For more information on Jürgen Schönhut please see his biography at http://www.cip4.org/cippi/juergen_schoenhut.html).