XML Brings JDF, papiNet and PROSE

Print Action, May 2004 by Robinson, Jon

Brown Printing Company was one of three companies involved with sending North America's first papiNet usage message, earlier this year. Still a relatively unknown, papiNet is a standard emerging across the printer, publisher and paper supply chain to track business transactions. It is built on XML language just like the much more heavily marketed Job Definition Format (JDF).

When a paper mill sends Brown rolls of paper, with papiNet capabilities they also send a delivery message file. When Brown receives that paper an electronic manifesto is put into its proprietary paper inventory system, which then generates a goods received message. When that paper is actually used on Brown's presses, a usage message is created. These are just three examples of papiNet's 20-plus messages available to participating publishers, paper suppliers and printers.

Brown is now in the final stages of being able to accept PROSE-XML, a third JDF-like standard that is specifically tagged as a print/production communication language. PROSE allows a publisher to build, for their printer, a file that contains information like number of pages, number of versions, print order, trim size of the magazine, and whether it is to be perfect bound or saddle stitched. This language's development began seven years ago under an initiative called XPP (XML for Printers and Publishers) before adopting the PROSE moniker.

"Within Brown Printing we are using XML quite a bit," says Mark Treat, chief information officer at Brown. "In addition to papiNet messages, we also have a warehouse management system using XML, our prepress environment is using JDF-XML and in production planning we have played a big role in the PROSE-XML initiative."

While there is no need to understand the intricacies behind XML, because all software eventually will be properly programmed to handle it, and certainly this is happening throughout the business world, it is important to understand that there is a real operational shift toward XML infrastructure. This migration is explained well by the emergence of papiNet, PROSE and JDF. The PROSE initiative, for example, sprang from an industry standards body known as Idealliance, which many months ago switched to XML to build PROSE instead of the commonly known electronic-data-interchange (EDI).

Before the arrival of the World Wide Web, many companies hired value-added networks (VANs) to move their data to other companies. There was a significant per-usage cost built into the contracts under these communication lines. With the rebirth of the internet, this is changing fast and today VANs are in the business of encryption, securing e-mail and developing management reports. Perhaps signaling a lasting comeback by the internet, XME is an interest in the business world for seamless, cross-industry communications.

"My understanding is that in Europe the implementation [of papiNet] is ahead of where we are in North America, so there is some additional momentum that you are probably not seeing here," says Curt Olson, enterprise architect manager at Brown Printing. "A cost savings that will be realized over time is that papiNet messages are exchanged over the internet and the third-party VANs are no longer necessary."

Just as most printers struggle trying to add value to the document, VANs were simply not adding value to the communication process. It was around this time, five years ago, that Art Colman began his involvement with papiNet. He was working for an e-commerce provider that was busy searching across the paper industry for a standard file language to conduct electronic business transactions.

He came across Idealliance's work with papiNet and would soon realize, that at the same time, by pure coincidence, though definitely a sign of the times, a similar XML-based paper standard was being developed in Europe. The two movements were brought together and for the first time, Europe and North America aggressively collaborated on developing XML. Colman is now the organization's North American technical director.

"Am I going to automate my processes?" Colman asks. "Am I going to hook into the internet? Am I going to collaborate with other organizations? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, and [printers] haven't done it yet, they are going to pursue an XME approach." Colman, then clears the air with three matter-of-fact statements: The internet grew up in HTME, XME has outgrown HTME, and HTME is crude XME.

Around 10 years ago, Brown developed its own paper inventory system out of necessity and now uses something called Ponton software to build XME into its paper supply chain, to integrate papiNet messages into its back-office system. Brown is currently the fourth largest publication printer and seventh largest catalogue printer in the United States, producing more than 525 titles combined.

"The [printing, publishing and paper] industries are extremely capital intensive and here is a technology that requires a different type of analysis to bring it in house," says Colman. "It is not a capital project it is a technology project and it has always been very challenging in these technology projects to determine the payback."