Aachen, 14th September 2006 -- Hiflex Corp, the leader in JDF-enabled Management Information Systems (MIS) is announcing that the new large-format commercial printer, All Out Inc, based in Woodridge, IL has purchased its Management Information System, "Hiflex MIS". The Hiflex system will connect bi-directionally to systems from KBA and Kodak using the Job Definition Format (JDF). All-Out Inc. is a large-format, start-up company, serving the Midwest general commercial printing market. The company was founded by President, J.B. Capuano and a core team of seasoned professionals, each having an average of 18 years experience. The JDF-networked components comprise Hiflex MIS, a KBA Rapida 142 with Logotronic Professional and Kodak's Prinergy PDF workflow system driving a Magnus VLF platesetter and a Nexpress digital press. The Hiflex MIS system allows printers to flatten their infrastructure and remove a significant amount of manual labor and cost in the process. With the most extensive real world JDF experience on the planet, Hiflex is able to integrate with every major vendor's JDF-enabled products, and multiply these savings downstream. "Lean & Mean" "The core focus of most printers today is the reduction in costs, and in particular, the reduction of labor, which comprises the largest cost in any printing company." says Capuano. "We are in a fortunate position of being a start-up and-in the spirit of the company's name-we decided to go "all-out" for a lean manufacturing process. We are planning to grow the business very aggressively, and the Hiflex system will allow us to accomplish this with much fewer staff than our competitors. This will allow us to pass savings on to our customers while improving our bottom-line profit. A healthy profit means that we can continually reinvest in the best technology and deliver the highest quality to our customers at a realistic price. It also insures that we'll be here for our customer in the future, so it's a win-win situation for all." "Best of Breed" VP of Operations, Gordon Gizowski commented, "We considered most of the major MIS systems on the market, and what we found with Hiflex was impressive: when we contacted other MIS providers we were disappointed by the limited availability of JDF connectivity. We met the Hiflex guys on several occasions and were impressed not only by what they could offer today, but also the potential their solution offers for the future. The ability to create live, fully editable layouts in the original Hiflex estimate, and transfer these downstream to prepress, press and postpress, removes a lot of manual steps that are both inefficient and a frequent source of errors." He continued, "While most vendors talked about JDF, and promised delivery at unspecified dates in the future, Hiflex visited our facility with their product (Hiflex MIS), Kodak's Prinergy and KBA's Logotronic Professional. We created a real job and actually saw the JDF integration working with both the KBA and Kodak products." "Planning for Growth" President, Capuano added "Another feature we liked about the Hiflex package was their unique, flat-rate, licensing mechanism. As we grow we will not have to buy additional licenses to deploy additional seats of their software. Furthermore, as we add more JDF-enabled devices, we won't be faced with complex ROI calculations to justify large expenditures, as there are no additional licenses to buy with a Hiflex system. Instead of playing with Excel spreadsheets for two days, to figure out if it's worth investing further in JDF, we can actually test the JDF connectivity and measure the actual results." "JDF & JMF" In the JDF-networked system at All Out, the layouts created in the Hiflex estimating module instantly transform into production plans and are sent downstream to Preps and Prinergy where jobs and impositions are automatically created based on the layouts from Hiflex. This completely eliminates the role of the production planner and saves prepress operators having to re-key imposition specifications. While the job is in prepress, all status changes (at the job and page level) are sent back to Hiflex using JMF messaging. Furthermore, any materials consumed will be automatically booked against the job, including: material name, quantity, operator, job component, and reason. This way costs can be recorded accurately and any material consumption above and beyond the estimated quantity, can be immediately investigated. More importantly, if these are chargeable alterations they will be flagged as such, and billed to the customer. All the details of the job transfer to the Hiflex scheduling program at the push of a button. The Hiflex schedule serves as a JDF controller for presses and postpress equipment. Once the schedule is set for the day, JDF job tickets, containing all of the administrative details (customer, job number, description) and technical details (paper, inks, work style, run length, make-ready allowance, etc.), are transferred to the press, so there is no re-keying of existing data. Once the ink-key settings are delivered from prepress, make-ready can begin. While the press is running, KBA's Logotronic Professional sends real-time JMF messages back to Hiflex, so that anyone in the plant can see the status of the press: job number, sheet number, good sheets, waste, job progress in percent, etc. Gary Marron, President of Hiflex Corp. said "All Out Inc. will serve as a model for the future of our industry. Not only will they have an extremely lean manufacturing process, the tools that we have provided them will allow them to eliminate many common errors and capture many sources of lost revenue (such as unbilled alterations). These all have significant impact on bottom-line profit."