Workflow/MIS/Web-to-Print

Gerlinde Williams has been waiting a long time for a graphic arts management information system. “I’ve been wanting this for 10 years,” says Williams, administrator of Central Printing for the State of Oklahoma. After putting up with an internally created job ticketing and billing program for years (with a flawed estimating function), her 22-employee print and mail operation got its big break when the IT department decided not to continue supporting the old program. She immediately thought of Avanti Computer Systems, having seen the Canadian company’s exhibits at in-plant conferences. Avanti won the bid and is in the process of installing its Graphic Arts Management

GENT, BELGIUM— May 22, 2007—Artwork Systems Group N.V. (EURONEXT: ARTS), a world leader in professional pre-press software, is investigating claims made by Markzware in a lawsuit filed in the federal district court in Santa Ana, California, that Enfocus products allegedly infringe Markzware’s U.S. patent. The lawsuit, which focuses on two Enfocus software products -- PitStop Professional™ and PitStop Server™ -- comes as a surprise to Enfocus, whose leading PDF preflighting products have been on the U.S. market for many years. Said Artwork Systems Group CEO, Peter Denoo, “Artwork Systems and Enfocus respect the intellectual property rights of third parties, and are currently conducting a

Markzware has filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Federal Court against Enfocus Software, Artwork Systems Group N.V. and Artwork Systems N.V. The lawsuit alleges that products manufactured and sold by the defendants infringe upon the Markzware U.S. Patent No. 5,963,641 for a “Device and method for examining, verifying, correcting and approving electronic documents prior to printing, transmission or recording.” Markzware preflight products for digital documents include FlightCheck Professional, FlightCheck Designer, FlightCheck Studio, FlightCheck Workflow and FlightCheck Online. The complaint seeks monetary and injunctive relief from all three defendants. “The preflighting described in the ’641 patent and owned by Markzware has been used without our consent,” explains Patrick

LAS VEGAS— March 28, 2007—The Monte Carlo Resort and Casino, Las Vegas, was the site of the Printable Technologies®, Inc., 2007 User Conference, March 14-16, 2007. Printable Technologies, leading provider of Web to Print workflow and Variable Data Printing (VDP) solutions and Software as a Service (SaaS), and six co-sponsors hosted 170 participants. The event - built around the theme “New Power/New Possibilities” - was kicked off by Andrew Paparozzi, NAPL Vice President and Chief Economist. Special interest learning opportunities included “Cross Media and Direct Marketing ROI” with Steve Tingiris, President/CEO of ProspectSmarter; “Database Cleansing and Manipulation” with Professor John Leininger of Clemson University; and

GENT, BELGIUM—2/16/07—Artwork Systems Group N.V. (EURONEXT: ARTS), a world leader in professional pre-press software, announces the financial results for the first quarter of its financial year 2007, ended December 31, 2006. Consolidated revenues for the quarter amounted to 11.15 million euro, a decrease of 7.18% compared to 12.01 million euro in the first quarter of fiscal year 2006, and net income amounted to 2.55 million euro, a decrease of 23.55% compared to 3.34 million in the first quarter of fiscal year 2006. First quarter highlights On October 16, 2006, Artwork Systems announced that it had confirmed an OEM agreement with Screen. Under the agreement,

Members of the In-plant Printing and Mailing Association will receive free management software as the result of a partnership with P3 Software. And since the cost of the software ($200) is more than IPMA’s annual dues ($185), the deal makes membership in the in-plant association essentially free. Both existing and new members will receive the P3Expeditor software, which manages the outsourcing of non-core production. This includes initial specification, supplier selection, pricing, job production tracking and delivery. The software can increase an in-plant’s productivity, control and accountability while documenting savings. Find out more about the software here: www.p3software.com/GetP3ExpeditorNowIPMA.php. To learn more about IPMA, visit

THE GRAPHIC arts market saw the need for industry standards and understood the growing XML (Extensible Markup Language) development when it supported the decision to create CIP4 (www.cip4.org). This association includes major equipment and software vendors in prepress, digital printing, offset and finishing. CIP4 created the Job Definition Format (JDF) as a standard way to exchange and understand job information. This process can begin to empower creative and production staffs to support an efficient manufacturing process. Tremendous efficiency can result from understanding the interdependence of each department. We largely still depend on paper-based processes that are isolated and disconnected with our current way

More coverage of Graph Expo product introductions . IT MAY be telling that the majority of presses in operation around the show floor of Graph Expo and Converting Expo 2006 last month were of the digital variety. Offset units were conspicuous in their absence. Digital presses have become part of the commercial printing mainstream, rather than being a specialty product segment or market niche. To emphasize this, Hewlett-Packard shared results from an InfoTrends study that surveyed a sampling of digital color printing buyers and producers. The research firm found that the percentage of color printing jobs with a run length

IN-PLANTS DEPEND heavily upon the skills of a few key individuals to remain productive: production managers, bindery operators, prepress technicians, computer systems managers, or any number of other specialized personnel that are a part of the print production workflow. When one or more of these people are absent, the whole workflow may suffer. Many in-plants are turning to workflow systems to help mitigate this problem. Workflow systems help to standardize how we process jobs. When we rely on key individuals, we are depending on them to remember what they did last time to solve a problem, or how to most efficiently move a job

RESTON, VA—August 29, 2006—The International Color Consortium announced it is launching a new user forum on color management on September 1. This will be an open forum hosted on the ICC web site at http://www.color.org/icc_users.html. The user forum is a further step in providing information and resources on the use of ICC profiles to the user community, and is in line with the ICC’s goals of building a user community, increasing participation by both members and non-members, and improving implementation of the V4 profile format. William Li, ICC chair, said “The goal of this listserv is to provide a forum where ICC color