Omni-presence of Cerm at partner booths during drupa demonstrates growing importance of MIS in print automation process 

Bruges, Belgium – At drupa, Cerm will demonstrate that their solution is more than MIS and drives the complete automation for narrow web printing. During the event Cerm will show its community engagement through partnerships with exhibiting industry leaders like Chili publish, ESKO, Heidelberg - Gallus, HP, Xeikon and many others... 

“During the pre-drupa press conference in Bruges on March 16, Cerm is performing an impressive live demonstration by capturing, processing and digitally printing all images of attending journalists on a personalized label. The picture is taken upon arrival on March 16 of each journalist, then personalized on Chili publish, processed on the Esko Automation Engine and finally printed  on the Xeikon presses. All journalists pick up their personalized set of printed labels the next day at the Xeikon premises. All of this is driven by the powerful Cerm MIS engine.” explains Peter Heyse, responsible of the product development at Cerm.

Geert Van Damme, Managing Director at Cerm, explains Cerm’s vision and approach: “Inspiring collaboration is not just a slogan or tagline for us! Our solution improves collaboration between all co-workers within the printing company. That is exactly what an MIS should do. But we go even beyond this by actively developing and integrating industry partner communication tools on the shop floor. The target is to reduce setup time and waste in administration and production, streamlining processes within the print shop. At drupa we want to express this focus with an audacious approach: we will be present and active everywhere without even have our own booth.”

Delivering as promised: new Web4Labels solution

Peter Dhondt, Head Business Development and Sales at Cerm, explains “We have a mission at Cerm which says ‘Deliver as promised.’ For over 30 years, Cerm has been doing just that: developing and delivering comprehensive solutions for the label community around the world. Our strong industry expertise and commitment to our customers  continues to drive our innovation, ensuring we can meet the demands of the market today and in the future.” 

At drupa, Cerm will release an important new versions of its digital shopfront Web4Labels. Based upon the remarks of the W4L user group, Cerm decided to entirely re-engineer the existing tool from scratch. Responsive Web Design will enable the use of any device: mobile phone, tablet, portable or desktop computers. Flexible information grids will give the printer the possibility to customize the information for every individual customer. These features will lower the threshold for customers to participate in the printers’ workflow via the Web. 

End-to-End workflow solutions at drupa

From Web-ordering up to Delivery in one simple mouse click. That’s what the label printing industry is aiming for. And Cerm already showed this workflow on many occasions, thanks to the collaboration with partners from prepress to finishing. 

Driving prepress

Back in 2003, Esko and Cerm pioneered the first draft proposals of the JDF-based MIS-to-Prepress interface. Meanwhile this interface received global recognition, including a CIP4 award in 2009 and 2012. With today more than 50 operational customers, Cerm is the undisputed record holder of MIS-to-Esko connections. Both market leaders maintain intensive collaboration between their development teams, most recently resulting in a dedicated integrated workflow at a flexible packaging converter. 

Similar interfaces for both a one-up workflow and Step-and-Repeat functionalities are meanwhile available with Heidelberg Prinect (driving the Gallus LabelFire 340 press), with Hybrid Software and with the Screen Equios workflow.

The upload of product-artwork by the brand owner in Web4Labels is enriched with an integration with Chili publisher. Customers can introduce variable elements in their products very easily now, without time-consuming approval workflows, based upon Chili templates.   

Ink-recipe-references and a calculation of the necessary amount of ink for all colours of a production job can be sent to GSE Ink dispensing systems.  

Driving print

The impressive rise of digital print for labels pushed both MIS and prepress software. Even to the extent that Step-and-Repeat functionalities are now available in many of Digital Front Ends: Gallus LabelFire, HP Indigo, Xeikon X800, Screen.

Including Xeikon presses into the JDF workflow lead to the 2^nd CIP4 award last drupa, in 2012. But also flexo presses can benefit from an MIS interface. The Cerm Gallus press-link can drastically reduce the setup time of the press and will feed back information to the MIS.

Heidelberg

Since Heidelberg acquired Cerm in 2011, they rebranded the Cerm software as Prinect Business Manager to make it an integrated part of the Prinect Software Suite for the offset market.

This intensive collaboration has lead to two new products, shown at drupa. Next to the interface to the LabelFire 340 DFE, including a 1-up workflow, there is a new automated ganging functionality where both MIS and Prinect Prepress are communicating intensively to obtain the best possible ‘ganged’ imposition for Wet Glue Labels, printed on sheets.

Driving finishing

And obviously, when the small-run problem in digital print disappeared, a new bottleneck in finishing became apparent.

One of the first to benefit from an electronic interface was AVT Camera Inspection. With a link to the original PDF for image-comparison and instructions for Step-and-Repeat, AVT can reduce the setup-time of the Camera to zero.

Another early innovator is ABG International. The manual setup time of their slitter-rewinder for labels is reduced to less than 1 minute with an MIS interface, providing all technical information, and an automated setup of the slitter knives.

Geert Van Damme, Managing Director at Cerm, concludes: “At Cerm, we are committed to developing and delivering solutions that enable our customers to meet the challenges of the narrow web printing industry today. One of our key strategies is to collaborate with industry partners. We already celebrated a 10 year collaboration with Esko and a 5 year collaboration with HP and Xeikon some years ago. And we now continue to re-energize these partners with new upgrades and innovations to the benefit of our customers. It feels really good to inspire collaboration.” 

You are kindly invited to view and experience all MIS innovations by Cerm at their partner stands during drupa. The Cerm team will a.o. be present at the Heidelberg booth in Hall 1 and the HP booth in Hall 17.