Gent (Belgium), April 18, 2004 - Esko-Graphics, the world leader in pre-production tools for the packaging industry and a major supplier of CtP systems for commercial printing, announces its participation as Event Co-Sponsor in the Seybold PDF Summit in Amsterdam, June 18 through 21, 2004. As an active member of CIP4 and Ghent PDF Workgroup, Esko-Graphics recognized the value of JDF in its early days and has invested considerably in the integration of JDF in Scope, its end-to-end supply chain management workflow. Esko-Graphics will host for the first time Educational JDF and Workflow Seminars of 45 minutes during the lunch breaks on Monday 19, Tuesday 20 and Wednesday 21 April. The company will present its answer to the challenges in the packaging and commercial printing industry by demonstrating live the new Scope workflow, implemented by following European customers and partners: - Tetra Pak, a global packaging converter, presents on Monday in the Nutricia case how Scope provides an end-to-end workflow bringing horizontal synergy into the packaging converting process. - Nestlé France will present on Tuesday, from the perspective of the brand owner, how open standards like PDF and JDF can contribute to improved workflow integration for remote operations and project management. - CERM, a Belgian supplier of MIS systems, will show on Wednesday the value of connecting an MIS system with a prepress system in an imposition use case. “Esko-Graphics has its historic roots in pre-production software, providing expert tools required for consistent volume reproduction of a design. Scope pushes workflow coverage both upwards and downwards into the supply chain,” comments Jan De Roeck, Director Marketing Packaging Software. “For example, Scope embraces the most popular desktop applications such as Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop and Acrobat and turns them into fully featured clients. Desktop users thus can interact with each other and with CAD and graphics experts, launch tasks on Scope servers, and access project information stored in centralized databases.” Scope seamlessly integrates graphics and structural design with production and project management. Detailed job specifications and parameters are defined from the start, and are automatically applied throughout the entire process to ensure standards-based, error-free processing. Scope’s BackStage workflow server is also JDF enabled. This means that any server task can be initiated from a JDF ticket. In a commercial printing environment, all production parameters are defined upon reception of the job, including the imposition. JDF is the ideal transportation vehicle to feed the Scope workflow with all the imposition details as defined in the MIS system. Esko-Graphics was instrumental in adding the JDF 1.2 specification to the “stripping” resource, a high-level imposition description. Many MIS suppliers are now implementing upscale added-value integration solutions based on this new JDF feature. Furthermore, Scope links the traditional prepress functions with sales offices, the pressroom, the finishing and logistics department: the broad capabilities of JDF links are applied for job scheduling, remote viewing and approval, plateroom feedback, and many more. Scope configurations range from simple and straightforward, to much more automated and interconnected, reflecting application requirements and business models of various levels of printing companies. Registration for the Seybold PDF Summit and the Esko-Graphics seminars, can be done on www.seybold365.com/register