Like Two Peas in a Pod

Only having to enter data once reduces sources of error and, above all else, saves money and makeready time. This is the idea behind the Prinect Packaging Workflow, the first integrated workflow for packaging printers, which Heidelberg will present at drupa 2008. And the Prinect Packaging Workflow can do even more than save time and reduce errors. It makes expenses transparent, reduces waste and ensures consistently high-quality color - even over multiple runs.

In the end, it all comes down to packaging. Products have to be protected reliably, promoted with an appealing design and look good at all times. After all, in addition to a product's quality, consumers also pay attention to the recall value of a product's "cover." What does that mean for manufacturers of packaging and labels? Their task is to process repeat orders - which make up around 80 percent of all of packaging printing - with the exact same quality. This is because packaging from different production batches is often placed directly next to each other on supermarket shelves. But packaging and labels do not just need to be as similar as two peas in a pod. As bulk goods, packaging must be produced economically above all else, which means as fast as possible and without wasting expensive any material or ink.

Packaging printer as partner
Constant color quality, short makeready times, little waste - this is the starting point for the new Prinect Packaging Workflow that connects management, prepress, press and postpress into one continuous workflow. "During the design phase of the packaging workflow, we worked closely with around thirty larger and smaller packaging printers from Asia, Europe and America," says Sabine Roob, Senior Product Manager of Prinect Preprint Applications & Packaging at Heidelberg. "We therefore knew exactly which real-life demands exist and could continue with and precisely align our development accordingly." The Prinect Packaging Workflow is not a product in the traditional sense, but rather a combination of several Prinect software components. It is also not completely new. Heidelberg's Prinect workflow has been well-established with commercial printers all over the world for a long time. Special functions have been added to extend it to packaging printing. Roob comments, "It was a logical step to further develop our Prinect workflow to fit packaging printers. After all, many production steps in commercial and packaging printing are nearly identical. And more and more companies want to produce both - for example pharmaceutical packaging and package inserts or CD covers and booklets."

Highest production reliability
The Prinect Packaging Workflow uses the open Job Definition Format (JDF) to integrate all departments within a print shop. What emerges is a continuous information flow among all systems and machines involved in the planning, production and billing processes. Data, therefore, only has to be entered once and is then available throughout the entire workflow. Data created in prepress, for example, is forwarded to the printing press with the Prinect Pressroom Manager for automatic presetting. This reduces makeready times and waste. The Prinect Postpress Manager also uses prepress data to set up die cutters and folder gluers. In this way, print shops also profit from drastically reduced makeready times in postpress, and since manual measurements and multiple entries aren't needed, mistakes and inaccuracies can be prevented.

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