Increasingly we live in a world striving for efficiency yet, amazingly, many of us potter along content in working in a kind of controlled chaos where we might know how we do things and our own modus operandi. Many of us rely on time-consuming and not desperately accurate methods of checking and sharing information across networks but, as data becomes a live element of our daily routines, there is a growing argument to tidy up our acts and adopt some kind of regulated compliance.

This is where JDF can become vital for business efficiency, organising those who muddle along with one company's workflow software, someone else's MIS and no apparent though of automating any part of the production or administration operation. What JDF does is act as a carrier of information, becoming the accountable link between different parts of the process and enterprise part of a business.

Every business needs to base its practices on solid structures

In short, JDF is an electronic job ticket which also has the ability to interact with all other compliant or enabled devices along the way, thus looking after everything from beginning to end. This doesn't only include workflow and job production across different devices, but it also enables estimating, ordering and a link with databases such as MIS and CRM.

As a technical standard, JDF is managed by a group of manufacturers known as CIP4. It has as its underlying language XML, which gives it the ability to connect universally to most development platforms. It's not a product, as such, but rather a set of rules. Integral to JDF is JMF, or job messaging format, that provides a command and control language for devices but, although their structures are inherently different, the latter is used to communicate unidirectionally and bi-directionally with devices, underpinning JDF's schema.

The apparent complexity might need some work to start with in order for a JDF workflow to function efficiently but businesses don't need to instigate it all at once. In fact, PSPs and display producers can start out by automating basic functions and gradually increase connectivity when they're comfortable with the operation. Rarely are two workflows identical and not every element in a company's capabilities is necessarily JDF ready.

The idea of increasing workflow efficiency should tempt anyone wanting to make all areas of daily operation more efficient and accountable. With the aid of JDF, information handling should become an automated process, even across multiple systems and this, in turn, minimises design, production and administrative errors. In today's environments getting jobs right first time is crucial and, thanks to the developments by the member companies in CIP4 and the underpinning formats which play a vital role, this is now possible.