June 2, 2024
HP and ePac Enter Into Strategic Agreement See p. 4
Fujifilm Celebrates Triple Win at EDP Awards 2024 See p. 18
BOBST’s New Hands-On Consulting Service See p. 22
Is drupa 24 the “Partnership drupa”? See p. 40
Connected Automation with Atomyx Vernetzte Automatisierung mit Atomyx BY DAVID ZWANG Print continues to evolve to keep up with the changes in markets and technologies. While there are lots of changes, the bottom line outcome is that run lengths and production time requirements are trending downward, even to a quantity of one. To better support these new market realities, business and production processes need to change, and the cloud is a great facilitator—with the right tools. In our increasingly connected world, we rarely see orders that are not delivered through the cloud by email, W2P, FTP solutions, EDI, etc. At the same time, a lot of business and production software tools moving to cloud-based subscription services. Moving business and production workflows to the cloud
not only saves hardware and maintenance costs, more importantly it also decreases the total time needed to get the approved order to the output device and delivered to the customer. This savings is especially critical if you are providing “order of one” mass customization services. Atomyx (Hall 7/ F06) is built on the vision of Connected Automation to enable the profitable production of individualized print jobs at scale. By using Atomyx to integrate and connect different software products you can create a complete workflow to seamlessly take orders from customer through production and even send the final product back out to the customer. The Atomyx platform consists of three products residing and communicating in the cloud: manage, prepare, and layout. They can also
be integrated into Enfocus Switch flows with free apps. This functionality significantly adds value to both new and existing Switch flows. Atomyx Prepare has an API that can be integrated with external platforms to convert, check, optimize, and prepare files for onboarding. This is designed to work with on premise onboarding in conjunction with cloud-based print procurement or MIS/ERP systems. At drupa, expect to see the self-onboarding functionality of Atomyx Prepare with OEM partners DesignNbuy and Omikai, with others in the pipeline. Continued on Page 2
People Profile: In addition to her role teaching Graphic Dr. Ruoxi Rachel Ma Communications students, she is also the adviBY DAVID ZWANG Ruoxi Rachel Ma is in her sixth year as a Graphic Communication professor at California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) teaching digital and offset printing methods and senior project which is a requirement for all students to complete prior to graduating. She has a Ph.D. in Paper and Printing Science from Western Michigan University.
sor to the student-run Cal Poly TAGA (Technical Association of the Graphic Arts) chapter.
Ma says when teaching first-year students, the students always say: “‘I want to learn about graphic design, can you teach us more about Adobe stuff?’ And as their professor, I have to be like ‘no, it’s so much broader than that.’” “We have to think about inks and substrates and toners. How was the paper made? Continued on Page 8