Ultimate Technographics, celebrating 20 years of innovation at DRUPA, is launching new ways of automating digital print production from web submission, through optimized printing, to finished product tagged for delivery to the customer. We will be demonstrating how we put the ‘2’ in web2print all the way to finishing via various types of connectivity and open workflows. In this new context, Web2Print is extended to include grouping of jobs for best print optimization and automation of finishing for best quality.

Ultimate will be demonstrating with several partners in various workflow areas how the prepress production for digital print can be driven through XML job ticketing to obtain a complete hands-off manufacturing flow. This goes beyond limited passing of information to actually convert the job intent and instructions for a complete job manufacturing process that is optimized for digital printing. Application realization will target the growing digital book market, booklet personalization, photo albums, calendars, greeting and business cards.

Workflow is about finishing first. Ultimate will be demonstrating not only the automated printing of these kinds of jobs, but also will be showing the complete automated finishing of these jobs on different types of finishing and bindery equipment. Ultimate will be demonstrating with finishing equipment partners this automated link with JDF finishing instructions and barcodes. These products will be folded, cut, creased, slit and bound with minimal or no human intervention.

Ultimate will also be showing how to keep track of printed paper in a digital world allowing the grouping of various orders of similar types of jobs together in order to increase productivity and profits. This new model of web2print productivity is now realizable with our new Impostrip software tools designed to carry critical information for the post finishing steps that is packaging and delivery.

Ultimate invented imposition software 20 years ago, and today Ultimate is going beyond imposition to true automated production of complete products. “20 years ago we put the stripper, with his knives, tape and film into the computer,” explains David Watson, founder of Ultimate, “but now we are moving beyond replacing the stripper’s knife with a mouse. Workflows for offset printing are efficient to produce one plate at a time, but are inefficient in Web2print where we have to produce multiple jobs at a time and together in an efficient and profitable way.”