Hybrid Software receives FTA Technical Innovation Award

For over 20 years, the FTA Technical Innovation Award has recognized the most innovative and impactful technologies for package printing and converting industry. This year Belgium-based Hybrid Software captured the honor in the Prepress-Graphics category.

‘Hybrid Software is thrilled to receive the FTA Technical Innovation award in the Prepress – Graphics category,’ said Guido Van der Schueren, chairman of Hybrid Software. ‘It supports our view that there is certainly room to improve existing prepress solutions in the market. We believe that the underlying PDF and HTML5 foundations of Cloudflow and Packz from Hybrid Software provide opportunities for greater flexibility for the applications themselves. And, it allows much more flexibility for the operators who, for example, in the “new normal” can do all their work from the comfort of their homes.’

Cloudflow Patchplanner is a web-based production tool, particularly for corrugated plates, that separates printed elements in the design file and consolidates and optimizes them to take up the least amount of image space, minimizing plate material use. The cutting pattern is sent to a cutting table and, at times, a MOM XML file is delivered to an automatic mounting device. 

The software is unique in a number of ways: a pure PDF workflow, a browser-based application using HTML5, and ties to MIS. Using HTML5, it can uniquely work in a distributed world available to anyone, no matter where they are in the world, rather than physically working from the workstation where an app is installed, one user at a time. And, because companies can set all their preferences, everyone is operating under the same, standardized set of rules. 

Many of the CLOUDFLOW Patchplanner setup processes are automated, along with capturing all the actual patch reports to calculate job costs. This information can be uniquely sent to MIS/accounting for billing and future estimates. 

HYBRID Software recently decided to include Patchplanner in the Flex Production Pack of its new Tectonics product, which saves flexo plate material and optimizes the use of flexo CTP devices.