It used to be, a raster format TIFF/G4 did the job. It was very simply, a black dot cloud compressed without any loss. This meant an application independant archiving format for data from all sources: Office, desktop and CAD as well as from the scanner.

One could work with the disadvantages of this industry standard: no color, full text search, insufficient displays of gray scale images and limited resolution at zooming. However, reliabilty of this standard had its price.

With the increasing requirements of colored images and pictures, the need for a modern archiving format was evident. With the release of the ISO standard 19005-1 it was simple to decide upon a new archiving standard: PDF/A.

For more than 10 years, SEAL Systems has delivered this security company with output and conversion solutions. Continuously, the progress of the PDF/A standard were watched and reported. In the beginning of 2006, the project started delivering more possibilities and qualityfor users – PDF/A is the digital archiving format of the future.


Project start date - 2006

The existing conversion servers for CAD and Office were switched from TIFF/G4 to PDF/A. A maintenance contract with SEAL Systems helped to keep costs low. With this migration, the servers were adapted to the new Digital Process Factory technology from SEAL Systems. With the DPF, the processes run more reliable and can be easily supervised from one work station. The additional benefit: there are unique interfaces between all connected systems like CAD, Office and Engineer PLM.

In addition, an investment was made in the solution PDF Adapt from the PDF Longlife Suite. With an integration into the DPF environment, a control method for imported PDF files from suppliers was implemented. If these files were not in standard form, PDF Adapt can be used to adapt the files according to the PDF/A standard.

Experiences

G&D project manager Franz Grabendorfer can report only positive things about the finished project:

"Because of the late release of the standard, we had to wait for the delivery of the modules longer than initially expected. After the release by SEAL Systems, in less than three days the software package was completely installed and configured on the servers and the users were trained. SEAL Systems has supported us immensely at installation and the start of use. During preliminary talk about the conversion, we received alot of help from sales representative Dr. Uwe Wächter. He supported in finding the right decision for our company.

Also the quality of the new development was wonderful. Now we know that we have chosen the right solution. With PDF/A we have a significantly higher quality storage in our database than with TIFF before."