Summary

The modernisation of newspaper companies with computerised pre-press departments and highly automated printing presses and mailrooms is today one of the biggest revolutions in the newspaper industry. However, total production management using computer-based tracking and active process control is still almost absent from newspaper production. In the future, pre-press, press, mailroom and distribution control systems will be linked to form an integrated newspaper production management system focusing on customer-to-customer satisfaction. Now is the time for newspapers to involve themselves in, and implement business wide computer-based management systems. To secure the investment and to guarantee an open system, we need to agree on a standard interchange mechanism for status and management information. We need a standard - a "PostScript" for management systems. IFRAtrack is the most mature answer to this need. The new version of IFRAtrack provides more func- tionality as well as easier implementation for both the newspaper and the system vendor. IFRAtrack has already been implemented at newspapers and commercial companies. An IFRAtrack Working Group 2.0 was formed in 1997 to continue the work on IFRAtrack. This publication explains the background and scope of the work. The text is close to the text of the first chapters of "IFRA Special Report 6.19", however, some additions and chan- ges have been made in the specification. To help system suppliers and newspaper technicians in the integration of IFRAtrack into their existing systems, we refer to the specifications in "IFRA Special Report 6.21.2". We hope that IFRAtrack will find a wide acceptance in the industry.