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The Colourhouse implement Tharstern and Kodak JDF Workflow - 27/10/2006 - Tharstern Limited
27/10/2006 The Colourhouse implement Tharstern and Kodak JDF Workflow
The Colourhouse, a regular winner of industry awards, was founded in 1993 and quickly established itself as a trusted and respected market leader in the field of printing. With full control of all aspects under one roof, quality of service, flexibility, and a highly skilled workforce have all become hallmarks of The Colourhouse. With ISO 9001 and 14001 quality accreditation and as an environmentally assured company The Colourhouse has a clear commitment to achieving high standards. Even with the certifications in place they still aim to reach beyond those levels through their own Perfection-Through-Improvement (PTI) programme.
The Colourhouse have recently adopted a JDF workflow using their Tharstern MIS which has helped them to reduce lead times, costs, and cut out wastage, whilst improving quality.
Phil Henry, IT Manager, of The Colourhouse advised. “We are passionately committed to achieving world class levels of quality and service and saw that using the JDF capabilities of our MIS would be a great tool to help us. We consider the flow of information to be the key to managing our business. With JDF integration we can automatically get back information that is 100% accurate and far superior to that received from any Shop Floor Data Capture system.”
The Colourhouse now have a JDF-based integration between T3 and Kodak’s Prinergy workflow. This runs alongside their Shop Floor Data Capture (IDC) workstations which covers activity on their
Phil added. “Implementing our JDF workflow was very easy as Tharstern did it all for us! Now the job is created in Tharstern and then submitted to the Pre-press server via Synapse link. In return, as soon as the workflow system actions any work on a job it reports back into Tharstern. When combined with our IDC it means Tharstern provides us with a completely visible workflow.”
Phil continued. “Information means everything to us here and now it’s even less effort to get that information. When JDF was first introduced it promised to bring about less duplication of data, greater accuracy, automatic feedback of activity and increased production times. All that was promised has been delivered. Plus we don’t have to rely on operators to input as much information. Whilst we haven’t got any physical cost savings to quote yet we know it is going to make a difference for us.”
“As we get into the swing of all the information we are getting back we need to start filtering out the information we don’t want. We also want to put automatic triggers in place to alert us to certain criteria such as more materials used than quoted for on a job.”
On the downside of JDF Phil reported that it is a tenuous set-up but now it is up and running it seems fairly robust plus re-setting any configurations does require some discipline and method of order to make sure it works.
Phil added. “We just have to think about making changes a bit more with JDF in place, looking further downstream and considering how it might affect everything.” As for the future of JDF at The Colourhouse according to Phil Henry it looks like it’s set to stay. “It will be part of my remit to lobby hard that any new plant equipment we buy has JDF and JMF capabilities. If you have up-to-the-minute information about what’s going on in your company you can make the right decision, an informed decision. The introduction of JDF through our MIS is letting us get more out of the system than before, giving us a management tool to generate and monitor, with ease, live accurate information as it happens so we can make the right decision.”
