Long term archiving with PDF/A at Giesecke & Devrient

Security at work – this is the basic principle of the worldwide leading manufacturer of chip card systems, identification solutions and all around the bank note. Reliability and quality were also needed, when an alternative for TIFF/G4 was searched.

For a long period, the raster format TIFF/G4 stood the test. It is so easy: 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 from the scanner.

One could live with the disadvantages of this industry standard: no color and full text search, unsufficient display of gray scale images and limited resolution at zooming. Reliabilty of this standard had its price.

Because of the increasing requirements of coloured images and pictures, the need for a modern archiving format was evident. With the release of the ISO standard 19005-1 the way was free, to decide about a new archiving standard, which surmounts the loss of the raster format TIFF: PDF/A.

For more than 10 years, SEAL Systems delivers the security company with output and conversion solutions. Continuously, the progresses at the definition of the PDF/A standard were watched and reported. In the beginning of 2006 the project startet finally: more possibilities for users and more quality – PDF/A is the digital archiving format of the future.


Project start in the beginning of 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 Eigner PLM.

Furthermore an investment in the modules PDF Checker and PDF Adjust from the PDF Longlife Suite from SEAL Systems was made: With an integration into the DPF environment, a control method for imported PDF files from suppliers was implemented. In case these are not with the standard, mostly PDF Adjust can help, 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 release by SEAL Systems a date was found within very short time and in less than three days with external support from the SEAL Systems specialist at G&D the software package was completely installed and configured on the servers and the users were trained. SEAL Systems has supported us exemplary at installation and starting up works. During preliminary talks about the conversion we had a great help by sales representative Dr. Uwe Wächter. He supported us to find the right decision.

Also the quality of the new development was convincing. Now we know, that we have chosen the right way. With PDF/A we have a significant higher level of our data base than with TIFF before."

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