Sept. 4, 2006—On Aug. 22 and 23, Eastman Kodak Co. brought together a group of international journalists to unveil a new way of looking at its products and technologies. Held in Rochester, N.Y., the event provided an opportunity to get a bit of insight into what goes on behind the scenes at one of the major manufacturers and innovators in the graphic arts industry.

The Graphic Communications Group (GCG) of Kodak was broken out of the quarterly financials, seeing sales rise 14 percent. Its goal, Jim Langley, president, GCG, senior vice president, Kodak, noted, is to get color right across all devices worldwide, no matter where a document is created or output. According to Mr. Langley, the group does not have all the pieces yet, however the close of the Creo acquisition last year brought it one step further. This year the group is unveiling Kodak Unified Workflow Solutions, an umbrella under which all the technologies from Kodak, Creo, and Kodak Polychrome Graphics—also acquired last year—will fall.

Under the Unified Workflow logo, the company has divided the technologies into four categories: business solutions, production devices, color management, and data management.

According to Joe Bracken, director, product development, GCG, printers invest in systems because they have a problem they need to solve. More often than not, however, some systems will work together, while others stand alone, making more work for everyone involved when data has to be re-keyed, or something is missing because it was not input into the correct system. The goal of the Unified Workflow concept is to ensure all systems across the print shop talk to each other and share information.

Workflows, Mr. Bracken noted, are non-linear. It is a myth that jobs come in perfect and ready to print every time. Instead, they get bounced around between the shop and the client, and among different departments within the shop, as corrections are required, tweaks are requested, and changes are made. A unified workflow means it touches every part of the business, not only making jobs themselves run more smoothly, but also making the shop more aware of the costs and work involved in each job, meaning they can move further upstream and become more of a partner, suggesting changes to projects before they even arrive for output, saving customers money, and improving the quality of work.

A Piece of the Puzzle
One major part of getting a job right—regardless of how great the workflow is—is color. To that end, the company introduced another new initiative, Kodak Colorflow Technology.

Doug Goertzen, director, color, GCG, said, "Color management isn't a simple topic, and we shouldn't pretend it is." He noted that color is difficult to explain and comprehend, difficult to use, and it doesn't always work the way we want it to. Color is highly subjective, not to mention different devices display it differently: what one person sees as blue on his monitor might print as purple on press.

To eliminate variables, Mr. Goertzen said, we need to make the complex as simple as possible. Kodak has standardized the way color is handled, and provided a system that can ensure it behaves the same way across devices and locations. Because the company has technology that touches every part of a business, it can provide solutions for every segment of the print process, from design, to proofing, to output.

For example, in a shop running a Kodak Veris proofer and a Kodak Nexpress, the Veris has inkjet aim calibration to adjust the direction of the jet pens prior to every plot, giving it greater control over density and color. In addition, it has an inline spectrophotometer that calibrates and confirms that the color is correct automatically. The Nexpress has an inline densitometer, allowing it to match the desired density and color. Everything is matched to a design that was created on a monitor calibrated with a Matchprint Virtual Calibrator. This ensures, from beginning to end, that everyone knows what the color should look like. Kodak introduced the Certified Process logo, which will be attached to jobs that have followed printer-specific requirements, moving the catching of errors further upstream, back to the customer.

Ambassadors of Print
Kodak, noted Jeff Hayzlett, chief marketing officer and vice president, GCG, has moved "from what could have been a house of brands to a branded house." The company has integrated its technologies and solutions, which came from a variety of sources, into a single system to help printers get jobs right the first time, reducing costs and improving productivity. M. Hayzlett pointed out that Kodak has one of the largest portfolios of digital and analog equipment. The company hopes to move its efforts upstream, practicing what it preaches, so to speak, by becoming ambassadors and partners to printers, helping them solve problems instead of seeking to sell them technology.

The company will be showcasing these solutions, as well as a few new technologies, at Graph Expo in Chicago, Oct. 15–18. Kodak invites attendees to see how its vision of Unified Workflow could be applied to a real-world scenario, and how Kodak technologies work together to get the job done.