Automation is no longer a buzzword in the printing industry. It is now a necessity to confront industry challenges, from inflationary cost increases to shrinking pools of skilled labour. The textbook definition of automation is “the state of being operated automatically,” which implies the task can be defined, repeated, and executed without intervention. When properly implemented, automation removes touchpoints and their costs while reducing errors in your production print workflow. Solimar uses Job Definition Format (JDF) and Job Messaging Format (JMF) to provide an infrastructure for best-in-class automation!
Automation can be driven physically or digitally. Physical automation drives manufacturing, mechanical systems, and robotics, but software is the powerful, essential element of process automation. As the age of automation dawned in the late 1990s, many industry vendors took part in meetings to develop a standard communication method across the many software tools within the printing industry to enable it.
The result was the creation of the Job Definition Format and its companion messaging protocol, Job Messaging Format to enable process automation. A JDF file can contain the definitions for every process required for a print job across every type of printing method using the language of an XML schema. Think of JDF as the set of instructions, and JMF as the handshaking that enables processes to share the JDF instructions.
JDF can form the foundational infrastructure for complex workflow automation. Many vendors provide easily accessible web hooks, APIs, or other mechanisms to share data using JDF/JMF to create a reliable data exchange network.
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