Quick Printing is the resource for the Commercial printing, visual and graphic arts industries. Since 1977, Quick Printing has focused on improving efficiency and increasing sales and profits in the print shop. Industry experts share their ideas and
Issue link: https://quickprinting.epubxp.com/i/455911
20 Quick Printing | February 2015 MyPRINTResource.com With Enfocus Switch, users can automate many production tasks. Switch also integrates with many third-party applications. Whether it's automating entire workfows, or just bits of it, the need is for speed. A lot of what we can consider "automation" is built into common production hardware and software. "Everyone has got on board with using those tools so it's not hard trapping, and everything is done inline at the RIP," said Greg Salzman, president of Aleyant Systems. "So it's not opening up Illustrator and trying to retrap the entire fle. The tools available streamline a lot of that." "The pressure that's been put on the shoulders of company owners and why automation is so important now is there's a declining business in commercial print," said Prudhomme. "The pie has gotten smaller, so the more effcient organizations, hence the more automated ones, can get a bigger piece of that pie." Appy Feat If you've been to a trade show or pe- rused the New Products announce- ments in this magazine, you've no doubt seen more and more emphasis on mobile prepress apps—for smart- phones and/or tablets—and while its tempting to see that development as jumping on the mobile app band- wagon, accessing the workfow from mobile devices is becoming import- ant for practical reasons. "There's a demand [for mobile apps] in a sense that the prepress manager will be mobile, going around the plant," said Watson. "If they have multiple plants, or if it's a relatively large facility, they're pretty much walking around. Now that they're walking around with an iPad or a smartphone, they can easily access job information." Easy access to job information better serves cus- tomers when they have an inquiry, and it also increases effciency when a decision needs to be made about a job or a specifc problem. Apps can also help with another trend: centralizing prepress. "We see companies wanting to centralize prepress," said Watson. "They may have more than one plant, but they want to centralize how and where they do the prepress." There is one other fast-evolving trend that may also solve centraliza- tion issues: the cloud. Cloudy Weather "From ourselves and from other suppliers, there is a lot of effort in 'cloudifying' solutions," said Prud- homme. "This is an evolution that's been set in motion and is unstoppa- ble. Within two to three years, we're going to see a major revolution, not only in the printing industry but in prepress departments because a lot of prepress applications that are running locally will be running in the cloud. I really think it will be the big story at DRUPA 2016." Cloudifcation of software in gener- al—and prepress software and other functions in particular—has benefts for both users and for suppliers. For users, there are no worries about having an out-of-date or unsupport- ed version of a product, and specifc jobs, tasks, and information can be retrieved anywhere and every- where—or at least anywhere there is an Internet connection. For the suppliers, it means a better, closer relationship with customers, and they can see in real time how users are working with their products. They can respond more quickly with tweaks and other improvements and enhancements. "One of the benefts of the cloud is that the relationship of suppliers and end customers will be taken to an entirely different level," said Prudhomme. "Software as a service will become more important in our industry," said Watson. "There are no set-up costs and you can get kickstarted with professional prepress systems. This is where we were going by launching Ultimate Bindery 4 with the potential to have it as a cloud service. We defnitely Flow information: Name PitStop2Switch sample 4 Description This fow shows how to put the prefighted fles and the reports into an output folder structure. The fles that are ok are put in a folder with today's date. The fles that generated an error, along with its report, ends up in a folder "error" with a subfolder having today's date. Background image None Header image None Allow advance performance tuning No Time-of-day window No Day-of-week window No Day-of-month window No