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      PostPress

      PostPress

      Print Decorating, Binding and Finishing

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        Digital

        Production Digital Print: Changing the Feeding & Finishing Market

        February 1, 2011

        by: Jim Hamilton, InfoTrends

        There are some basic advantages of digital print that sometimes are overlooked. I’m not talking about economic short runs, quick turnaround or the ability to personalize documents. Those are well known and broadly acknowledged. No, I’m talking about capabilities such as electronic collation, automatic duplexing, the ability to mix multiple paper stocks in a document, having one operator run multiple machines and access to a range of finishing capabilities in-line. These capabilities are part of what makes digital print attractive, at least in theory anyway.

        In practice, of course, customer demands and the nature of the printed piece will determine which type of print and finishing process to use, whether it’s offset, digital, some hybrid combination or another printing process entirely. Decisions about what process to use are made every day by print service providers. In regard to finishing, commercial printers have tended to use off-line finishing methods because of the wide variety of work they accept. Those who focus on a particular application such as books, catalogs, direct mail, magazines, newspapers or packaging are much more likely to have dedicated finishing capability that they depend on, and which may operate in-line. When digital print comes into the mix, it often happens that print service providers continue with off-line finishing methods because those assets are already in place and effective, even if they are not particularly well suited to the short runs and quick turnaround of digital print. Digital print processes with in-line finishing tend to be employed when users have a lot of one print application. In cut-sheet digital print environments, the most common in-line finishing is for stapled sets, booklets, folded brochures and bound documents. In-line coating and diecutting are in place in a small number of cut-sheet systems. Requirements for roll-fed systems are a bit different. Slitting, cutting, stacking and binding are common for publishing environments while folding and insertion are typical in transaction and mail environments.

        Digital print’s biggest weakness to date has been that it becomes less cost effective as run lengths increase. Offset and other types of traditional printing presses, as you all know, are very effective at manufacturing large quantities of static printed matter but they lack the ability to personalize. In production environments, digital print often has been seen as not having the fire power to meet the demands of high-volume printing. A number of trends are conspiring to change this:

        • Run length requirements are dropping and so are expected turnaround times as the pace of our mobile society has accelerated.
        • Content creators are rebelling against the old mode of “warehouse and distribute” and instead are moving to virtual warehousing via electronic distribution of documents and selected printing of constantly updated materials.
        • Digital print engines are becoming faster and more robust, and also are adding capabilities beyond process color (CMYK) such as spot color, spot and flood gloss, white, MICR and UV security features.
        • In-line finishing for digital is expanding its range of capabilities and at the same time, vendors are standardizing finishing interfaces and using the same finishing devices across multiple product lines; it’s not unusual today for the same in-line finisher to be an option for black and white and color product lines.
        • In-line devices for cut-sheet production digital print are becoming more compact and productive, in part because of more flexible consumables for functions such as mechanical binding (case in point: GBC’s eBinder and Ellipse consumable).
        • All types of finishing equipment (in-line, near-line and off-line) are becoming easier to set up and adjust, often automatically.
        • Automated job ticketing and JDF workflows allow in-line and near-line finishing devices to pick up job information and set up easily for the next job.
        • Digital print processes are capable of hands-off, lights-out production that takes place with a minimum of human intervention.
        • New high-speed inkjet technologies are pushing the barriers of cost, speed and productivity.

        Many of the items I mention above have been on an evolutionary path over the past two decades. These will continue to impact the market. It’s the last item – high-speed inkjet technologies – that is potentially market changing because the speed and economics of these devices are so impressive. At the same time, though, they create new requirements for next generation finishing systems.

        One immediate challenge is supporting the finishing needs of wider web widths. Production digital print devices typically support a paper web width of between 18 and 21 inches. A number of new high-speed color inkjet printers (such as HP’s Inkjet Web Press T350, Kodak’s Prosper 5000XL, Océ’s JetStream 3300, Ricoh’s InfoPrint 5000VP and Screen’s TruePress Jet 520ZZ) all have expanded web widths, with some as wide as 30 inches. The speed, productivity and web width of these devices present challenges to existing in-line finishing equipment. These challenges are being overcome, but it’s also one reason why some users prefer to stick with the narrower format offerings, simply because they raise fewer issues in finishing.

        You’d think that a trade show would be one of the best places to see some of the exciting new developments around roll-fed finishing products, and in fact, if you were at IPEX (last May in Birmingham, England) or have plans to attend drupa 2012 (next May in Dusseldorf, Germany), both of those events provide a great showcase. Most recent, however, was a special event that Hunkeler (a Swiss manufacturer of roll-fed oriented feeding and finishing equipment) has run at its headquarters over the past few years. A lot of people call it the Hunkeler open house, but its official name is “Hunkeler Innovation Days.” It took place from February 14th to 17th in Lucerne, Switzerland, and attendees were be able to see a range of equipment from vendors active in roll-fed print such as HP, Kern, Kodak, Océ, Pitney Bowes, Ricoh/InfoPrint, Xeikon, Xerox and – of course – Hunkeler, among many others. Closer to home, the ON DEMAND show (March 22-24 in Washington, DC) is a great place to catch up on trends in cut-sheet finishing for production digital print (in-line or otherwise).

        The extent to which automation in finishing has advanced is demonstrated by what Pitney Bowes presented at Graph Expo last fall in Chicago. There, high-speed color inkjet output from an IntelliJet 30 was slit, cut and inserted into blank envelopes. An intelligent tracking system identified each envelope and, based on the number of sheets contained within, adjusted the height of the imaging platform so that the correct address, personalized information and marketing message could be added in full color to the already sealed envelope. Of course, this kind of high-volume intelligent production system represents a significant financial investment, but there are other examples that demonstrate that feeding and finishing innovation is not just taking place on the high end. For example, the Kirk-Rudy envelope feeder that RISO showed in conjunction with a 150-ppm ComColor 9050 solves a simple, but important, issue. How do you print effectively on all kinds of envelopes, including windowed ones which may have trouble passing successfully through the hot temperatures of the fuser rollers of toner-based systems? Inkjet systems such as RISO’s ComColor have a solution, but only when used in combination with an effective and productive envelope feeder. In time, we expect to see more cost effective folding and insertion technologies that bring this finishing capability within reach of smaller print service providers.

        We’re also seeing how inkjet technology is being used for spot and gloss coating. MGI’s JETvarnish uses inkjet heads to apply a UV coating on sheets up to 20 by 40 inches. At IPEX, an Israeli company called Scodix showed a digital embossing product it calls the 1200. The 1200 uses inkjet heads to apply a thick UV coating on sheets as large as B2 format (19.7 by 27.8 inches). We expect this to be an active area that is driven by innovative usage of inkjet heads.

        Workflows that take advantage of digital print and in-line or near-line finishing are part of a larger trend toward optimization, automation and lean manufacturing. Printing has lessened in importance as it has become one weapon in an arsenal that includes other media. We no longer live in a print centric world and yet print continues to play an important role because it’s physical, lasting and doesn’t require electricity to read. Digital print, in particular, is key, because it forces us to revisit the basic value of print in an electronic world. How we answer the following questions will in large part determine the success of print in the future.

        • How do you most effectively automate print and finishing processes?
        • How do you use digital print devices as virtual document warehouses?
        • How do you leverage digital print in conjunction with document delivery via e-mail, mobile or other electronic delivery methods?
        • How do you differentiate print and add overall value?

        Finishing will certainly play an important role in how we address these questions.

        In conclusion, it’s short-sighted in light of the changing marketplace to continue to view production digital print as a short-run technology. The market is expanding, and it’s only able to do so as finishing technologies provide a key component to help accomplish this revolution.

        Jim Hamilton is a Group Director at InfoTrends (www.infotrends.com). You can follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jrhinfotrends and read his blog at http://blog.infotrends.com/.

        Digital Storm: Digital Print in the Offset World

        November 21, 2010

        by: Julie Shaffer, Printing Industries of America

        Statistics are a funny thing. Depending upon the story you want to tell, you can spin the same data to report almost diametrically opposed stories. To illustrate, consider this March 8 headline from an article reported on the Folio: magazine website: “Print Magazine Advertising to Grow in 2010 Despite Popularity of Online.” The story reports the results of a just-published study, “Marketing and Ad Spending Study 2010: Total U.S. and B2B Advertising,” a survey of 1,000 advertising executives conducted by research and advisory firm Outsell, Inc.

        Sounds optimistic, doesn’t it? Advertisers are spending more on print! The report does, in fact, indicate that ad spending for magazines will rise this year by 1.9 percent, reflecting a spending boost of 4.2 percent for consumer titles and 1 percent for B2B.

        The bigger news in the report, however, as reported in virtually every other news outlet, is reflected in headlines like this one: “Digital Marketing Spend to Overtake Print This Year.” The story, as reported in minoline, an outlet for media watchdog firm Access Intelligence, begins, “The long-awaited print-to-digital tipping point is about to be passed. According to information industry consultancy Outsell, the level of marketing spent on the web and in print will finally cross over this year, with $119.6 billion of revenues flowing online and $111.5 billion going to newspapers and magazine ads.”

        The news shouldn’t be that surprising, considering the accelerated rate at which publications are moving some or all of their content online. The big takeaway from this story for those in the commercial printing space is in those words “tipping point.” We see the phrase, lifted from Malcolm Gladwell’s book of the same name, more and more today, especially in regard to how communication methods are shifting from traditional media (read: print) to newer, mostly digital, media. As Gladwell defines it, tipping points are “the levels at which the momentum for change becomes unstoppable.” It does seem that the shift from print to digital is reaching a tipping point.

        This is not necessarily a bad thing for printers that are providing more than just ink on paper, but are rather offering communication services that embrace this digital shift.

        The Outsell report offers some news that is much brighter than the report of a slightly increased print ad spend. The study also indicates that 30.3 percent of the $368 billion marketers plan to spend this year will go to print. More notable is that B-to-B advertisers cite direct mail as one of the methods used to achieve the highest ROI, and this group considers cross-media marketing as the most effective option with 78 percent combining three or more marketing methods.

        Positive News for Printers

        This is actually positive news for the enlightened commercial printer that has opted to recognize this kind of shift in advertising and marketing communication and offer products and services to help these communities connect with their audiences. Whether we call this being a “marketing service provider” or some other name, the basic premise is that we expand our services to be able to provide what our customers (and to a large degree these have always been marketers) see as essential to effective communication. This means becoming a provider of not just the static print portion (in the event that there is one) of a cross-media marketing program, but also personalized communication including variable print, personalized URLs, micro sites, branded web portals and even interactive mobile links via 2-D barcodes.

        Of course, personalized printing can’t be accomplished without a digital press (well, not with any kind of positive ROI anyway). That leads to another tipping point within our own industry – the commercial printer that offers only offset has become a thing of the past. Estimates vary, but it is generally believed that more than half of commercial printers now have some kind of production digital printing device on the floor. While we all know that 2009 was not a stellar year for print, those digital devices have proven to be the one bright spot in the economic picture. In his March 2010 Flash Report, Printing Industries’ Chief Economist Ronnie Davis reports that 2009 ink-on-paper print sales declined a whopping 14.8 percent while digital print sales increased, albeit a marginal 1.4 percent (for inkjet and toner).

        These printers are increasingly using their digital and offset presses for hybrid projects, in which jobs combine both conventional and digital printing. Davis notes in the 2009 report Beyond the Horizon: Key Dynamics Shaping Print Markets and Printers over the Next Decade, that almost 12 percent of current jobs combine digital and conventional print, a number that increased to almost 25 percent for sales leaders (printers in the top 25 percent of sales growth).

        The “New” Printers

        Gary Garner, president of GLS Companies, a Minneapolis, MN, printer with 300 employees and $50M in sales, can attest to this. In a presentation at the 2010 Printing Industries Presidents Conference, Garner detailed case studies of three very different digital/offset projects managed by GLS. The company publishes a customer newsletter, including sections printed offset and digital. Each issue features a “crossover” image where the digital and offset forms stitch together to show how close the color matches across printing processes.

        Garner changed the name of the company to GLS from General Litho Services in 2004, anticipating the current trend of removing reference to print in a company’s name. The company is devoted to the philosophy “we’ll get it done” and positions itself as a one-stop marketing service provider of Integrated Communication SolutionsSM. “We’ve had a tremendous amount of success integrating various technologies and getting the message out to our customers,” says Garner. “We do a lot of focused direct mail marketing to very targeted lists, data processing and direct mail dimensional packages where customers go to the Internet to find details about the offer – just a whole myriad of things we’ve been able to do as our business has changed.” Garner stresses that it’s important to get away from the transactional-type projects the industry has traditionally worked on and focus on developing programs that help forge partnership with customers.

        This transition isn’t happening just for general commercial printers, but in packaging as well. Bryan Hall heads Graphic Visual Solutions, Greensboro, SC, a 20-year-old company that offers a mix of commercial offset, flexo and folding carton work. In 2009, Hall and his management team decided to change the direction of the company, adding a new mix of capabilities including digital printing, wide-format graphics and cross-media services. To reflect the company’s new direction, the name was changed to Graphic Visual Solutions. The rebrand, says Hall, was something he felt the company had no choice but to do. “When you’re trying to get a seat at the table with a new prospect, you mention your company name,” he says. “Graphic Printing Services says ‘print’ and doesn’t reflect everything we can do. It’s possible that this prospect will never purchase printing, but may need one of our other services. So we thought that broadening the name would help open doors for us.”

        The Digital Tipping Point

        The digital tipping point, whether it is adding digital printing options in an ink-on-paper printer or digital/electronic delivery of a communication message, is indeed upon us. While it may not be essential to the success of every print service provider to take part (there are still a few successful letterpress shops out there), for most, getting on the right side of the way things are tipping will be key to future growth and success. Pay attention to what advertisers and marketers are doing – it points to what you need to do to be their service partners.

        Julie Shaffer is vice president, digital technologies for Printing Industries of America. She can be reached at 412.259.1730 or at jshaffer@printing.org.

        Reprinted with permission from the Printing Industries of America: The Magazine. Copyright 2010 by the Printing Industries of America (www.printing.org). All rights reserved.

        Fast Impressions with Digital Printing

        August 21, 2007

        by: Glenn Schelich, Trends Presentation Products

        Can we get 4-color process? What is the smallest quantity that can be ordered? We need a different name on each item, can it be done? How soon can we get a quote? How soon can we get a press proof? How soon will the order ship? HOW SOON, HOW SOON, HOW SOON!!!!

        Sound familiar? These are everyday questions that have to be answered at Trends Presentation Products, and have been since the company first started producing digitally printed, turned, and glued products. The nature of the press (in the case of Trends Presentation Products, a Xeikon digital press) is synonymous with speed of proofs and orders, small runs, and additional artwork opportunities, specifically 4-color process items. As today’s presentation needs become more and more on demand, these questions relating to the characteristics of the digital press are more prevalent in the industry’s everyday business.

        Why A Digital Press?

        The market is trending towards shorter turnaround times, smaller production runs and the need for full color graphics similar to the art that can be created on computers. Shorter turnaround times and smaller production runs can be challenges for offset printing in a turned edge manufacturing environment.

        Digital printing allows companies to be “trend setters” in the loose leaf manufacturing business. Many of the expenses associated with offset printing are eliminated. Gone are film, contract proofs, and printing plate charges. Also, with large format digital printers (18.7 inches wide by 36 feet) and the machines’ accompanying duplexing capabilities, both sides of the sheet can be printed at the same time.

        Another advantage of digital printing, specifically with the Xeikon press, is the ability to process art files directly from prepress computers. A series of jobs can be prepared and run simultaneously with minimum upfront costs. This technology is more efficient than the traditional manufacturing process of ruling the sheets, then printing the headings, and finally page numbering each sheet of the fillers. Digitally printing both sides of the sheet at the same time with the capability to consecutively page or case number the fillers is a huge advantage available with some digital printing machines.

        Small production runs with several versions of artwork are ideal for the digital press, as is the opportunity to personalize each ring binder, desk folder, certificate holder or any number of presentation specialty products.

        Speed and Efficiency

        Each order for a digitally printed product starts with the correct artwork template sent to the graphic designer to lay out the art. Trends Presentation Products has further simplified the process with a designated “FTP” site that allows for the art to be sent in without any e-mail hiccups. Once the artwork is pre-flighted and the job is queued up, a press proof is generated and sent to the customer for approval. This gives the customer the opportunity to see the actual wrap that will be used on the presentation product. Upon approval, the job is processed and shipped, in many cases in as few as ten working days or less depending on the additional “bells and whistles”.

        As noted in the opening paragraph, speed of delivery has become in many instances the driving force on many projects – occasionally, more so than price. The “on demand” generation is looking for the highest quality product in the time frame of the project’s needs. Production time is rarely given enough thought when it comes to servicing customers’ needs. Digitally printed wraps and liners allow more variety of decoration choices, and the added fact that it cuts down on production time greatly benefits this new generation.

        A digital printing press that prints at 600 dpi provides a print that is hard to differentiate from an offset printed wrap, unless you have the trained eye of a printer. Very few projects, if any, have been turned down due to wraps not meeting the print quality of the graphic designer or end user customer.

        Opportunities

        Utilizing the digital press is advantageous in producing turned edge presentation items. Any type of custom turned edge product can be produced, ranging from the typical ring binders, slipcases, slantboxes, all styles of post binders, menu covers, tote boxes, and certificate holders to the more technically-produced point-of-purchase displays.

        Many of the orders command more than just a digital wrap or liner. Customers today also may incorporate foil stamping, blind debossing, screenprinting, or specialized diecutting. Besides the standard wrap lamination (gloss, satin, or matte), a post-embossing pattern can be added to create a more unique look and feel to any digitally printed wrap, allowing even more variety for the graphic artist’s imagination.

        Trendsetter is a loosely-used word that applies to many companies on an ever-changing scale. Yesterday’s trendsetter is today’s dinosaur, trying to find a way to make its operation fit in the new technical world. Investing in new technology and equipment can allow a business to conform to the quickly changing needs of its customers.

        If you would like more information on Trends Presentation Products and its production capabilities, please contact Glenn Schelich, regional sales manager, at glenn.schelich@trendsbinders.com. Trends Presentation Products produces turned edge binders and poly products, selling them exclusively to resellers, including other manufacturers who do not produce turned edge binders and presentation items.

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