Mortsel, Belgium – DRUPA – 18 February 2004 – Leading vendors involved in the creation of the CIP4 initiative to bring standards to the printing and publishing industry are reconfirming their commitment to the Job Definition Format (JDF) at this year’s Drupa. Agfa, EFI, Heidelberg, Screen and others continue to develop and promote products that are JDF-based, ensuring interoperability among vendors’ systems, as well as connectivity between departments, partners and clients. Print producers who purchase products that are based on the CIP4 JDF standard can be assured that regardless of the vendor, products will all be able to communicate with each other, using a vendor neutral standard that ensures easy set up and guarantees long lasting collaboration. Agfa, EFI, Heidelberg and Screen plan to promote JDF at drupa 2004, and demonstrate that JDF collaboration, based on the CIP4 interoperability specification is ready for implementation. They believe that CIP4, as the successor of CIP3, which has been working since 1995 to bring computer integrated manufacturing to production, is the best place to develop the standard and to verify the interoperability. The organisation brings together vendors, consultants and end users in the print communications, Graphic Arts industry and associated sectors, covering a variety of equipment, software, peripherals, and processes. Members participate in focused working groups to define future versions of JDF, to study user requirements, and to design the JDF Open Source software tools. “We are of the firm belief that interoperability is a natural benefit of standards and that therefore the body defining the standard has to be the one specifying and assuring interoperability. CIP3, the predecessor of CIP4, successfully delivered the Print Production Format (PPF) to the graphic arts industry and hence we trust CIP4.” said Johan Berlaen, Agfa’s General Manager, Software Solutions. “Members of the CIP4 initiative believe that customers want the basic links between vendors’ products to be vendor-neutral, in order for users to gain the most benefit and to ensure high productivity for several years even with up-grades of each of the interlinked systems,” said Jörg Bauer, Heidelbergs Vice President, Prinect Product Management. “EFI is fully committed to CIP4 and JDF because those industry standards will enable printers to focus on making their businesses more competitive and profitable by automating print processes across multi-vendor environments rather than struggling with integrating disparate, proprietary products," said Ghilad Dziesietnik, EFI Vice President of Advanced Workflow. “We also believe that the interests of the whole printing and publishing industry are best served by the work being done in CIP4, the only independent gatekeeper of the JDF standard and interoperability,” said Tomitsugu Morino, Screen’s Media Technology Company President.