JDF

Where do we stand? By Margaret Motamed (Director of Software Platforms, EFI, and CEO, CIP4)

The enthusiasm of 2004, when some commentators even tagged that year’s drupa as ‘The JDF drupa’, has given way to questions about the progress of JDF. Questions about its adoption are to be expected, because we’re at the stage in JDF’s evolution where everyone understands what it can do (or thinks they do) and looks around to see who’s actually using it. Some feel disappointed at what they find, because – let’s be honest – there was a fair amount of what, with hindsight, looks like hype. But it was well-intentioned: after all, you can’t blame vendors for creating a marketing ‘buzz’ around their products, or CIP4 for giving the technology a hearty shove into the industry spotlight. And then there was drupa...

Real substance

But let’s be clear about one thing – there is real substance to JDF, and print providers who buy into the ‘JDF’s been hyped’ line to avoid having to tackle its implications are gambling with their futures. This is a very important technology, and what’s needed is a renewed effort to get this message across – one built on increasing print providers’ understanding of just what JDF really is, what it offers the industry, and what it’s already delivering.

It’s important to understand JDF is not a product, or an application, and that it isn’t owned by any single vendor – the specification is administered by CIP4. It’s a device-independent, vendor-neutral format that provides the digital equivalent of a job-bag , simplifying the information exchange between different applications and systems in, and around, the graphic arts industry.

Evolutionary

JDF is not revolutionary in itself - it’s evolutionary, the latest innovation in a tradition of hugely influential standards such as PostScript (which describes pages) and PDF (which describes documents). JDF describes jobs by linking the different processes that make up a job, from the customer’s initial enquiry right through to distribution. Because it’s written in XML (Extensible Markup Language), it allows information to be added to the job-bag as the job moves through the process, and the inclusion of an internal bi-directional messaging system - JMF (Job Messaging Format) – bridges the gap between production and MIS.

JDF is also evolutionary in being the latest step in printing’s progress towards Computer-Integrated Manufacturing (CIM). Although the printing press is in effect a machine tool, albeit a complex one, printing has been slow to adopt CIM; partly because it is a manufacturing industry whose products are highly customised; and partly because of the lack of consistent communications standards to allow disparate systems to talk to each other in a multi-vendor environment.

This is where JDF offers its biggest benefits to the industry. In the last decade data-exchange formats such as CIP3 and PPF (Print Production Format) have laid the foundations of CIM by integrating the pre-press department with the pressroom; by supporting every stage of production, JDF extends CIM’s reach enormously, upstream towards the MIS and downstream to the finishing department and beyond. As such, it makes CIM a graspable reality for the industry by enabling computer-based integration and automation, thus reducing bottlenecks and improving overall business practices.

But JDF is about more than increased automation and decreased costs; more even than improved customer service and faster turnarounds. JDF can extend an automated communications capability directly to the customer, increasing the ability to implement a self-service model in which customers can view online proofs, check a job’s status, enter orders, upload files and access activity reports. They can even assess the viability of a job prior to submitting it—will the design result in the job being too expensive, too time-consuming.

And of ultimate importance for printing’s position in a multimedia communications industry, JDF acknowledges that customers communicate via media other than print, and enables you to help them make appropriate choices about what is—and what is not—printed. It thus offers service provider the opportunity to manage an entire range of multimedia communications on behalf of the customer. It was the respected educator and commentator Frank Romano who observed that if print got a college report, it would read, “Print works and plays well with other media.” JDF makes this possible.

What’s happening in practice?

The answer is, a lot more than many in the industry think, because to appreciate its extent you have to know where to look.

According to the latest figures from CIP4 there are over 4,000 JDF installations worldwide. It’s important to realise that many companies are using JDF without being especially aware of it, in the form of vendor-specific, rather than cross-vendor, workflows. Heidelberg’s JDF/JMF-based Prinect solution is an example of this.

Then there’s the vendor adoption of JDF, which is substantial. Every major vendor is embracing the JDF specification, and the level of vendor representation on CIP4 – standing at over 150 companies – pretty much covers the industry.

Both these levels of take-up are in line with expectations: we need to remember that we are still in the early stages of JDF, when the ‘early adopters’ are out there at the leading edge and the more conservative businesses are watching to see how they get on.