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Product category: Printing Pre-Press Systems and Materials (Repro, Platemakers, CTP, Workflow, Document Management, Design Software, etc.)
News Release from: EnFocus Software NV | Subject: Pitstop Automate PDF workflow system
Edited by the Printingtalk Editorial Team on 19 December 2006

Directories Printer's PDF Workflow Eases
Planning

Promedia, the Belgium-based member of the World Directories Group, responsible for producing the Gouden Gids and Pages d'Or , has selected Enfocus Pitstop Automate workflow system.

Promedia, the Belgium-based member of the World Directories Group, responsible for producing the Gouden Gids and Pages d'Or and other yellow and white page directories, has selected Enfocus Pitstop Automate as its PDF workflow system The Enfocus Pitstop Automate workflow wuill be used for the book, planning and production department, where over 50,000 pages this year have been turned in to PDF files

Promedia is a long-established company of over 35 years and the largest Belgian publisher, employing approximately 800 people.

Part of the World Directories Group and owned by Apax and Cinven, Promedia specialises in assembling telephone and local directories and prints over five million copies Yellow and White Pages every year.

All of its products are also available on-line.

Located in the company's Antwerp offices, the book, planning and production department at Promedia is solely responsible for ensuring that page data destined for one of the different directories is merged correctly and turned in to a PDF file.

Dedicated software is used to merge data and graphics from the advertising department with the telephone directory and other page content information.

With 10 Yellow Pages and 21 White Pages to produce for Belgium - one per area, per year - as well as other local directories, such as two Mobilo Guides and 25 Local Guides, careful planning of the page-combining process is a critical element in the directory production.

In addition, one of the company's current challenges is to ensure that in the face of rapidly expanding on-line directory use, the paper directories continue to provide value and grow.

The book, planning and production department is the last area of control for directory pages before they are sent to be printed.

With actual volume for the paper directories anticipated to grow from the current 120 files per day, to 400 per day in 2007.

Management of those files was becoming an increasingly difficult task, so the group was also driven to seek a new workflow system by its dissatisfaction with a workflow overseen by a third party.

Pitstop Automate brings Promedia certified automation, which promises graphic arts document integrity, traceability and process control throughout the lifecycle of a file, said Enfocus.

With Pitstop Automate, the entire pre-press process at Promedia has become simpler and more straightforward.

Individual workflows are set up and files are dropped in to Pitstop Automate folders where they are monitored and checked for inaccuracies, such as missing fonts or colour separations.

Any errors are clearly detailed in an automated error log.

Proofs are produced from the pre-flighted file, which is ultimately placed in the correct output folder.

Individual file processing is dependent on which version of a directory the individual pages relate to.

The Pitstop Automate monitor allows the department to keep an eye on the production process and the system's email notification function is used to alert stakeholders in case there are issues with any PDFs.

That level of automation has decreased production time and increased quality.

With the new system in place, the company is confident that there is now room to manage up to 500 files a day, if necessary, added Enfocus.

"Pitstop Automate provides us with an interactive, on-screen method of monitoring our PDF workflow, easily customisable to what we want it to do for us," commented Katrin Dierickx, book, print and planning manager at Promedia.

She added: "It enables us to simply and quickly check for any problems and it also fixes those problems with little manual intervention.

We have been using it with great success for over three months and have even extended its use, so that we are ready to handle PDF files for the Portuguese and Dutch directories as we do for the Irish directories at present." Dierickx said that her department handles upwards of 28,000 files a year for the various world directories they produce in Belgium.

She explained: "We are finding this facility invaluable, as these files can be monitored by the Automate software even when there is no one in the office and we can be certain that any faults or discrepancies will be recognised and an alert sent out.

These files come in to us on dedicated servers, where they are picked up by Pitstop Automate, turned in to PDF files, pre-flighted and finally FTP'd back to Ireland or Portugal." "Bringing the control in-house with a product as simple to use as Enfocus Pitstop Automate has not only made our lives easier but increased our productivity and ensured the quality of our work as well," Dierickx said.

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