News Article

Langenhagen, Germany, December 2007

Konica Minolta’s Printgroove POD Serve and Printgroove POD Guide are now available, completing the award-winning software suite for professional automated print production – the Konica Minolta Printgroove POD family. The Printgroove POD suite ensures a simple, streamlined work process, increasing the overall productivity of CRDs (central reprographic department), print providers and commercial digital printers.

Konica Minolta’s Printgroove POD software suite now consists of three modules: POD Queue, POD Serve and POD Guide to automate production printing environments. The first module POD Queue has been on the market since June 2007, POD Guide and POD Serve are available now. Together, they enable 24/7 availability of a CRD or commercial print shop.

Printgroove POD Serve is a web-based job submission tool acting as an online store front. It is available 24 hours every day of the year and is accessible either via the Internet or a corporate intranet. There, users can submit print jobs as well as create and customise job ticket settings. Any file format can be handled easily, including graphics, photos, presentations and multimedia. POD Serve offers real-time job status verification and users can be notified of the status via email, if desired.

Printgroove POD Guide is the management module of the Printgroove POD suite. Via job ticket management, users can control the complete production process at any stage, from submission through production to delivery and invoicing. Unlimited production steps and stations can be customised to fulfill the required job. Control of the production floor has been made easy with print schedule management and job tracking at the operator’s disposal. POD Queue, the first of the Printgroove POD suite modules, is the queue management and clustering tool and ensures the appropriate devices are selected for the print job.

“POD Serve and POD Guide help to simplify work processes in production printing,” says Achim Ricks, Konica Minolta Business Development Manager at Konica Minolta Business Solutions Europe. “Together with POD Queue, they provide a complete solution for a streamlined process reaching from job submission to billing. Users can conveniently create customised workflows – overall, ease of use is an important characteristic of all Printgroove POD suite modules.”

A fourth and final module of Konica Minolta’s Printgroove POD suite is yet to follow. Printgroove POD Ready will automate a print product’s make-ready process, allowing Konica Minolta bizhub PRO operators to handle sophisticated production tasks themselves. Printgroove Ready will be introduced at drupa 2008.

 

Terms and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders and are hereby acknowledged.

 

Product images are available at www.konicaminolta-images.com

 

Contact:

 

Carlos Baart

Konica Minolta Business Solutions Europe

Phone: +49 (0)511 7404-324

carlos.baart(at)konicaminolta.eu

 

Claudia Bitzer

Pleon GmbH

Phone: +49 (0)711 210 99-416

konicaminoltaTeam(at)pleon.com