Simulation of the production chain by use of an XML-based Job Definition Format

Based on the XMLstandard a vendor and platform independent exchange format has been defined in order to manage the integration of the complete production chain. This Job Definition Format (JDF) has been initiated by the four companies Adobe, Agfa, Heidelberger Druckmaschinen and MAN Roland and is focused on the workflow of the printing and publishing industries. The further development and maintenance has been given to the CIP4 Consortium. At the University of Wuppertal in cooperation with the Heidelberger Druckmaschinen a JAVA class library for writing and parsing JDF has been implemented, which is published within the CIP 4 Consortium as an open source library. On top of this library a JAVA based simulation tool for modeling JDF Workflow is developed at the University of Wuppertal. This simulation shall enable to test new JDF agents, controllers and devices in an early stage without the requirement of a real existing production environment.