Putting Smarts in PDF Workflows

Production workflow is increasingly controlled by customers, who deliver “print command” intelligence embedded in document files. Contrary to the old adage, “Speed, quality, price...pick two,” today's software-powered operations cram all these benefits into every print job.

PDF, rapidly becoming the de facto industry standard, is good for page image production, yet weak when it comes to driving automated finishing. But the latest PDF version has attracted software developers to automate finishing processes.

And surprisingly, some of the best software is written by small entrepreneurial outfits, where bright developers who have chosen not to join big firms work complementarily in parallel to them.

Objective Advantage is a good example of such a developer. Another is CPS, Inc. of Blue Bell, PA, whose latest product is SmartPDFPrintware. CPS's bright engineer, Pradip Shah, has for two decades been developing software that drives thousands of Xerox high-volume production printers. Shah has several engineering degrees as well as an MBA.

“A major utility company customer of ours needed a solution for a printing production dataflow problem,” says Kenneth Poulsen of Xerox. “Not only did CPS deliver an elegant solution, the utility company client ordered 60 copies.”

Combining automated production on-the-fly removes human intervention and, consequently, much of the risk in complex mailing and fulfillment print production. “There is not a single off-the-shelf application, including all the workflow modules of the respective print engine and workflow vendors, that can automate using document attributes known as 'File Name,' 'Position' and 'Text on Page' control methods,” says Shah. Print service providers often must write custom PostScript applications to even approach the levels of performance of Shah's software.

In his latest development, Shah exploits intrinsic PDF file information, automatically reading its structure to extract and act on its requirements as it moves through print and finishing. This next-generation SmartPDFPrintware provides non-stop delivery of all types of print-ready PDF jobs, concatenating files, merging documents, then personalizing thousands of documents in a single run under complex rule structures.

Along with the position, file name and text-on-page parameters, flexible controls allow for multiple PDF documents with different physical page sizes to be grouped in correct sequence and run at full system speeds. Additional rules govern substrate types, finishing, duplexing, slip sheet insertion, etc. This type of control is essential for the ever increasing personalization of print.

Most setup steps can be quickly accomplished. Says Shah, “It takes print service providers weeks and even months to automate what SmartPDFPrintware can do in 10 minutes.” Craig Cooper, software architect for ChoicePoint Precision Marketing, Alpharetta, GA, uses it. “We currently have as many as 200 shipments in a day consisting of various documents per customer. Being able to electronically collate documents from various sources printing on non-matching stock will dramatically cut our labor effort and time to prepare each customer's order.” www.b2bedocuments.com