Mortsel, Belgium - October 30, 2007 - Agfa Graphics announced today a partnership with Technique Group, providing customers and prospects an integrated solution that combines Agfa's :Delano Project Management Portal and the :ApogeeX range of Prepress Products, with Technique's modular Management Information System (MIS). The integrated solution, which will be available in the fourth quarter of this year for the UK and North American market, was demonstrated during the GRAPH EXPO exhibition in McCormick Place in Chicago, IL. The partnership enables Agfa to combine the MIS product portfolio and skills from Technique, with the Prepress and Project Management product portfolio and skills from Agfa. The result is a fully JDF/JMF-based integrated solution, providing customers and prospects the benefits of complete job automation and control, from job creation to delivery of the final product.
Technique's modular MIS solution can include modules for estimating, order management, production scheduling, inventory management, data collection, job costing, and customer relationship management for the sales staff to manage sales inquiries and customer service. It can also span multi-plant facilities.
"A fully integrated MIS and pre-press system is fast becoming an essential tool to allow improved efficiencies, customer service, visibility and interaction," said Paul Cooper, chief executive officer, Technique Group. "I am absolutely delighted that our partnership with Agfa will provide a first class solution to meet these needs."
"This solution provides the benefits our mutual customers are looking for," added Bart De Pelsmaeker, director of Commercial Printing Software, Agfa Graphics. "Through shared know-how, an extensive product portfolio mix, and using CIP4 compliant JDF and JMF, we can offer customers a fully integrated solution. Jobs defined in Technique, flow to :Delano and :ApogeeX for automatic production of the proofs and plates.
"In addition, in-house page approvals, or proofing of pages through the web by print buyers using the web-based :Delano StreamProof proofing solution, are automatically picked up by Technique," explains De Pelsmaeker. "At any stage, production status on the job such as preflight results of delivered pages, approval of pages and plates made, are in real-time communicated back to Technique for tracking and cost calculation purposes. While a job is in progress, Technique MIS can adapt it to accommodate late changes to parameters, pages or press, after which it's dynamically reprocessed, and this without the need for a :Delano or :ApogeeX operator to intervene."