Electronics For Imaging, Inc., launched the latest update to EFI™ Fiery® Command WorkStation®, version 6.7, which helps Fiery customers improve automation and job management to better handle growing numbers of short-run print jobs. Fiery Command WorkStation enables a unified Fiery Driven™ print room, allowing users to control all Fiery servers, either local or remote, thereby gaining operational efficiencies and increasing productivity.

A long-time user of EFI™ Fiery® digital front end (DFE) solutions, sedruck KG in Leipzig, Germany found that the new features in the latest EFI Fiery Command WorkStation – available as a free upgrade – helped the company better manage print jobs and improve their turnaround times on a growing volume of short-run, quick-turn print jobs.

‚Getting us back into full production faster‘

"The fact that we can now search for jobs across all of our 10 Fiery digital front ends is amazing, it saves us up to 80% on time and energy per search to find what we are looking for. Having two methods to pinpoint a job or jobs is also extremely valuable, plus, the interface has been kept super-simple," said Manfred Gebauer, head of Purchasing & Technology Process Management at sedruck KG. "This new function also provides supervisors insights into a job’s journey. Multiple hits across queues and servers can indicate production challenges that are difficult to identify in other ways, allowing us to investigate and fix issues more readily, getting us back in to full production faster. Thank you, Fiery Team."

Many print businesses face the same kind of production pressures. According to data from industry research company Keypoint Intelligence, nearly a third of European print service providers and 55% of North American print service providers reported that dealing with a high number of small jobs is a primary challenge for their current workflow. As the number of orders increase, print service providers in many parts of the world are also facing labour shortages, a factor that makes automation more necessary than ever.

Find it, prepare it and print it better with version 6.7

The new version 6.7 of Fiery Command WorkStation – the management software that comes with all Fiery DFEs for cut-sheet and wide- to superwide- format printers – addresses the most pressing job volume and labour needs of print service providers by speeding up the administration and production of print jobs with several new enhancements. Automated job tagging using print presets now helps customers classify, find, and manage jobs faster. And, a new search tool gives users the power to search for jobs across all their connected Fiery DFE servers. Both features save valuable time when managing a large volume of jobs in fast-moving print shops.

Command WorkStation – working in tandem with connected Fiery Workflow Suite software – also makes other important print job preparation tasks simpler and faster for print service providers. In the new release, for example, the Workflow Suite’s Fiery ImageViewer solution has new controls for reordering, duplicating, or deleting pages, eliminating the need to step out of the tool for simple page-level edits.

Print businesses can save even more timing by using Fiery Hot Folders with Command WorkStation 6.7 to automate server presets, imposition templates and more. And, for variable-data jobs, users also have the ability to significantly streamline job submission tasks using another integrated solution, Fiery FreeForm™ Create – a free, award-winning product for designers and Command WorkStation users.

"Getting many short-run, high-quality jobs done as fast as possible is in the Fiery DNA, and we have always been focused on the challenges of high-volume, short-run work," said John Henze, vice president of sales and marketing, EFI Fiery. "Our customers choose Fiery because it excels in this area, and this newest Command WorkStation release gives customers even more of what they want."

For more information about EFI Fiery Command WorkStation and other advanced print solutions from EFI, visit www.efi.com.