Tharstern has announced that it is delighted to have been unveiled as part of German press manufacturer Heidelberg's partnership programme with manufacturers of management information systems (MIS).

The initiative, which aims to enable users to boost their productivity by further improving the interfaces between third-party MIS systems and the Heidelberg Prinect shop workflow, was announced at the beginning of this year's Ipex 2010 exhibition, at the NEC in Birmingham.

A number of these interfaces are already in use in several successful Heidelberg customer projects, and the aim is for many more to be implemented.

The partnership programme also includes fellow MIS manufacturers EFI, PrintPlus and CERM along with Tharstern, who have now all agreed to the framework collaboration.

According to Heidelberg, the MIS manufacturers that have been selected are those with particularly well-developed JDF interfaces, all of which will assist Heidelberg in helping to maximize the possible range of functions available, as well as providing long-term support for further developments to workflows.

In every instance the inter-connection between Prinect and the MIS systems from the MIS manufacturers in the partnership programme is based on CIP4's ICS specification of the JDF format.

The plan is also for further expansion of the interfaces between Heidelberg's Prinect and the MIS business partners, all of which will help enable Heidelberg's customers to gain a concise view of the capabilities being offered by the open systems.

The Heidelberg partnership programme is also open to further additional partners to be added.

Ipex 2010 is being held at the NEC in Birmingham from 18-25 May.