Workflow System Improves Multilingual Production

Freedman International in the UK has recently invested in the Puzzleflow workflow system from ACC HSH Group.

Freedman International in the UK has recently invested in the Puzzleflow workflow system from ACC HSH Group.

The UK company is a specialist marketing services company that works with international business to optimise the efficiency of their marketing communication.

The company frequently produces pan-European product launches, channel promotions and customer communications on behalf of global companies.

Freedman International's customers include Kodak, KLM, Shell, American Airlines, Phillips, SAS and Xerox.

The Puzzleflow workflow system that the company has purchased offers a full file control, including an automatic toolbox.

Some of the controls that are included are archive, image compression, Preflightcheck, PDFX Maker, Normalizer, Mailer, Pageselector, Pagesplitter, Scheduler, Jobsplitter, Pagescaler, Boxresizer, Page Orienter, Runlist Editor, Runlist Builder, Profilecreator and Signaturedesigner.

In addition to those standard functions Freedman International has purchased Layermanager, Colourmapper and Personaliser modules.

The Puzzleflow system was purchased to allow Freedman International to improve the way that the company handles its multilingual production.

It is not uncommon for the company to have to produce up to 25 language variations of a brochure that needs both four colour production and a special colour.

The most practical and economical way to achieve this is to print the CMY for the complete run length and then print the black and special colours as the language variant, said ACCN HSH.

The work is initially created using Quark or InDesign for the page layout.

Previously the problem was the time it took to cope with the varying lengths of text and that frequently gave the Freedman problems right up to the final platemaking and printing stages.

With Puzzleflow the system allows the company to finalise the artwork positioning in CMY and then combine with the black and special colour for each separate language version.

A master high resolution PDF is then generated for the English version and after that the language versions, along with the special colour are then recombined.

Nait Attia, DTP manager at Freedman International said: "We frequently had problems with this aspect of our production but with Puzzleflow the language versions fit perfectly every time.

It was vital that any system that we purchased allowed us to continue with our current methods of working, whilst saving us time and money.

Working alongside the Puzzleflow technical staff it soon became apparent that this would be the system for us.

Their support responses were brilliant." Andrzej Czyz, a partner at ACC HSH Group added: "We deeply believe that soon Freedman International will buy additional Puzzleflow modules.

Our system perfectly fits all companies that need to automate their production.

Freedman International is a big, well-organised agency and we are very happy that the company has found our system appropriate." He continued: "As we observe a growing interest in our products in the UK market, we are going to open an office in London right after Ipex.

It will organise a distribution network in the UK, train local partners and offer professional support for our UK-based customers.".

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