News Digital Printing
Canon develops automated workflow tool for high-volume, short-run printing

In a bid to help customers expand their printing capabilities, Canon Solutions America Inc. has launched Conveyance, a JDF-enabled automated workflow tool developed to boost high-volume, short-run digital print production.

This intuitive software, developed by Canon Solutions America’s Boca Raton Software Development Group, serves as a new addition to the company’s expansive, advanced software portfolio.

In an April 20 press release, Canon said the Conveyance software “helps to create opportunities to streamline operations, distribute prints faster, and develop new revenue streams for book manufacturers, publishers, and commercial printers.”

The software has features that include file transfer and job information exchange via a standardized, comprehensive XML-based file format. Conveyance’s intuitive, rule-based workflow also allows complete automation of order submission, CIP4 impositions, job grouping and splitting, as well as routing, while tracking the integrity of each order.

“Conveyance…provides publishers and commercial printers a single workflow platform to efficiently produce books, magazines, and book-like products,” said Ryan McAbee, director, Production Workflow, Keypoint Intelligence LLC. “The automation starts with onboarding orders through XML/JDF, and then follows intelligent processing for batching, imposition, output management, and the ability to make late stage changes. Users can modify the workflow to meet the requirements for new customers and their work, enabling sustained operational benefits.”

Additional customer benefits of Conveyance include:

• CIP4 compliance utilizing a common language to support the entire print production process as well as the print product life cycles.
• Features designed to quickly react to changes in the market and produce digital short runs to accommodate unexpected demand while eliminating warehousing costs.
• Ability to work more efficiently and profitably by reducing manual intervention, limiting paper changes, streamlining workflows, and steadily helping to reduce the cost of short-run digital production.
• Reduced operator intervention by minimizing paper changes with intelligent job grouping and sending feedback from devices to controlling software for real-time order tracking.
• Increased flexibility through dynamic bindery to impose signature layouts during runtime without returning to prepress, to meet rush jobs or tight production schedules.
• Flexibility to manage inline and nearline finishing, covers to text block authentication, and reprints from the main production through a central system control panel.