|
Main
At drupa, I caught up with industry analyst and all-around good guy Andreas Weber who is working with the German Association of Communications Agencies to increase awareness of digital printing. He made the point that colleges and universities need to do more to educate young marketing students as well as future communications professionals about new capabilities of digital printing technology. As a Chief Marketing Officer it’s a topic that is top of mind. Because there’s a real opportunity for companies like mine and others to make stronger connections with all the stakeholders involved in the changing world of graphic communications.
That means spending more time with advertising, design and production experts who play a key role in the printing value chain – long before anything hits the press.
Many people think of drupa as a printing show. It’s even billed as “The Olympics of the Printing Industry”. That may be true, but I can tell you Xerox isn’t at drupa to be in a printing competition. We’re there to win the gold medal in Communications.
Why do I say that? Because the real prize isn’t given to the company who does the best job of putting ink on paper. It’s awarded to the company that knows how to help partners and end users profit from high-impact marketing and communications.
Printing is one of the enablers. But as a CMO, it’s not my top priority.
My job is to create a superior brand experience, to communicate our message, to influence customer behavior and ultimately to grow revenue. We do that through “Big brand” and “little brand” strategies. Earlier this year, we launched a good example of a “Big brand” initiative when we re-launched our corporate identity. It was in full view at drupa. But more marketers need to realize that “little brand” experiences are equally important. That means leveraging everyday documents like bills, statements, and manuals to convey your brand image and market your offerings.
Because when we use “little brand” touchpoints to communicate in more relevant ways, we convey a “Big Brand” message. That message says: We’re listening to you … We understand who you are … And we want to earn your loyalty.
And that’s worth a gold medal any day. To hear the podcast of our conversation, click here or on the podcast link at the top of the page.
Mike Mac Donald
Chief Marketing Officer
Xerox Corporation
Before the start of drupa the event was being referred to by many as the Inkjet drupa. I have to say I may have been the person who started this phrase after the end of drupa 2004. I did however moderate my wording earlier this year when I stated that perhaps drupa 2012 would be the real inkjet drupa. My reasons for saying this were that from what I was seeing I felt that inkjet would not be competing with xerographic (electrophotographic) approaches using powder or liquid toners in challenging four-color offset for print quality. What I was seeing were new high-speed continuous feed print engines that were setting new standards for printing color at speed, but where the quality was not comparable to that from most of the xerographic printers. let alone the best ones. What we were seeing was improved business color. Business color is the term created to define the color produced by the Kodak (then Scitex) Versamark high-speed inkjet printers that been the sole players in producing color at high speed before 2006.
Continue reading "Was This the Inkjet drupa?" »
I may have discovered the most loyal Xerox customer on the planet at a reception the other night. Martin Rosenbaum, director commercial of Buenos Aires, Argentina-based Copygraph said his company was a user of the first Xerox product, the 914 copier, and now has a fleet that includes two Xerox DocuColor 8000 Digital Color Presses. Since getting that first 914 in the early 1960s, he said, “We have never bought any equipment but Xerox.”
He was at drupa to look at the new Xerox iGen4 Digital Production Press and to learn about transpromo and one-to-one marketing applications. “We’re trying to be the leader in transpromo and one-to-one marketing,” he said. “We’re just beginning now, and some banks are doing it. We came here to learn more.”
That’s why he attended the Xerox Graphic Arts Premier Partners learning and networking session in Dortmund, Germany, the day before drupa opened. “It was a very good experience for us,” he said of the meeting.
Will Copygraph be the first company to migrate from a 914 all the way to an iGen4 press? “We are fascinated by the iGen press. But I’m not sure our market is prepared for it.”
He was far more definitive about his relationship with Xerox. “We are the most loyal client of Xerox that Xerox has ever had.”
Shelley Sweeney
Vice President, Data Processing Service Bureau and Direct Mail Segment for the Worldwide Graphic Communications Business, Xerox Corporation
-------------------
Martin Rosenbaum of Copygraph and his wife, Christina.
One thing I noticed really taking off at drupa 2008 is the ability of the exhibitors to frame their solutions not from the perspective of the speeds and feeds of the big iron—though clearly there was lots of big iron there!—but rather in the context of a business problem the print service provider can offer its customers. More specifically, these are being portrayed as specific applications. Many are running those applications live on the show floor, and provide materials that help visitors understand what infrastructure—hardware, software, media, etc.—is required to successfully produce each application.
This is a critical business approach that should be adopted by print service providers as they work with their customers. Hanging out a sign that says “We Do Print” is just not cutting it anymore. And adding “Value-Added Services”, while a start, is not the answer either. Customers don’t necessarily think in terms of mailing or fulfillment or web-to-print. They think in terms of getting orders to their customer quickly, or making materials available for easy access by franchisees, remote sales personnel or agents. And they are always looking for new, different and better ways of getting their work done.
From a truth-in-lending perspective, I need to disclose that I spent ten years at Xerox, and was lucky enough to be involved as a sales person in Silicon Valley when the DocuTech was launched in 1990. One thing the company did very well with that product was to position it in the context of the applications it could produce more efficiently, or new applications that could not have been produced until the advent of the technology. Being in Silicon Valley, I—and my customers—benefited from the work behind defining the best way to execute print-on-demand manuals. By the time I moved, on, we had installed some 150 DocuTechs running about a half a billion pages of tech-doc on demand each year! We solved a business problem for these companies, and they ate the dogfood, big time!
At drupa, I saw that Xerox had taken this concept to a new level. The stand was organized around 50 real customer applications. Not only were they showing HOW they were produced, but they provided a nice spiral bound booklet where each page identified the goals the customer was trying to achieve, the workflow that was used to produce the application, production notes, sales tips and green advantages. These 50 applications were divided into several application areas: Books and Manuals, Collateral, Digital & Offset Together, TransPromo and New Business Applications. This made it easy for visitors to quickly migrate to the area of most interest to them for their business. And each area was equipped with a comfortable Conversation Station where visitors could speak one-on-one with experts to get their questions answered. I spent time in the Books and Manuals area and spoke with John Conley, who ran the books on demand operation for RR Donnelley prior to coming to Xerox. So these were truly experts!
I am pleased to see suppliers to the industry making this shift, and congratulations to Xerox on its benchmark performance at drupa!
Cary Sherburne
Whattheythink.com
Sherburne & Associates
www.SherburneAssociates.com
Every time I come to Drupa I like first to take the overall sense. I mean, despite seeing specific questions I try to realize what is beyond the whole set of machines and technologies exposed in the show.
This Drupa reflects what we see in the world today in terms of the printing markets.
In one hand we could see a strong visitation and expositors coming from the emerging markets where the questions about volume are still updated. On the other hand the search for value added and lean and automated manufacturing coming from the mature markets visitors.
Both markets reflecting the competition today where emerging markets are growing faster while the mature markets are declining in real terms.
Anyway, for both markets the same reality: printing industry is definitively depending on IT solutions. All workflows, MIS, CIM, processes integrations, etc. are on that way. This is the IT era. This is the IT Drupa. Not a surprise at all. The surprise is still seeing printers being surprised.
Hamilton Terni Costa
AN Consulting
I normally don’t cover the digital print engines in my work with WhatTheyThink, preferring to focus on the front end stuff, which I generally find more interesting. But at drupa, I did spend some time looking at inkjet offerings. Well, after all, it was supposed to be the inkjet drupa. What’s a girl supposed to do?
There certainly was inkjet everywhere you looked. Even Heidelberg is bringing an inkjet offering to market! Screen was showing the prototype of a sheetfed inkjet press that looks to be pretty interesting, perhaps an easier way for sheetfed printers to take advantage of this approaching freight train of a trend. But what I found most interesting were the inks various suppliers were touting, from HP’s Latex inks to Océ’s CrystalPoint technology with TonerPearls, to Xerox’ toner gel technology demo.
Continue reading "A Look at Inkjet" »
I had the honor — and pleasant responsibility — of hosting the Public Printer of the United States and his small entourage at the Xerox stand on one afternoon of drupa — and again that evening at a reception for North American members of the Xerox Graphic Arts Premier Partners.
Robert Tapella became the nation’s 25th Public Printer last fall, overseeing one of the largest print buying operations in the world, ordering as many as 1,000 printing jobs a day from private vendors, on behalf of federal agencies. At drupa, his agenda includes investigating the latest digital printing solutions and sustainability initiatives to support his vision for the U.S. Government Printing Office of the future.
We had plenty to show him. One of our longer sessions in the stand was a demonstration of our new web-fed color and black-and-white devices (the Xerox 490/980™ Color Continuous Feed Printing System and the Xerox 650/1300™ Continuous Feed Printing System, respectively) that are good candidates for the books that are his primary product. We had another good conversations in the innovation area, where some of our future technologies are on display.
That evening, his team joined us for drinks and dinner at the Hotel Schnellenburg, a pleasant setting overlooking the Rhine River. About 75 of our top North American customers were there, and many told me they were absolutely thrilled to meet him.
The irony wasn’t lost on us, that our top North American print providers were meeting with one of the leading print buyers in the United States — in Düsseldorf, Germany.
Tom Wetjen
Vice President, Worldwide Graphic Communications Business
Xerox Corporation
Robert Tapella, the Public Printer of the United States, right, and Tom Wetjen of Xerox at the Xerox Premier Partners reception at the Hotel Schnellenburg during drupa.
During my visit to the Xerox booth at drupa I stopped by the Xerox Business Development Seminar center where Xerox was hosting eight daily sessions on digital business opportunities.
In between sessions I had a chance to speak with Andreas Weber, one of Xerox's Business Development Seminar speakers. Andreas is principal of Andreas Weber Global Communication GmbH, CEO of Mainz, Germany based magazine VALUE Verlag AG and founder of German-based digital printing online community Digital Druck Forum.
Andreas shared with me his white paper on Smart Communication: Reaching Engaging Communication Beyond Ourselves. In the paper Andreas states "Communication in this age should be easier. Technology abounds to ease the process of communication. But as in other areas of technology, the various systems are not completely integrated for seamless use." Andreas suggests tools need to be developed to facilitate the search for information, and facilitate peer-to-peer transparent discussions.
The concepts Andreas presents in his white paper follow the "mega trends" Xerox has been speaking to for a few years: Personalization - the ME generation; Collaboration - about us working with each other; and Digitization - the realization of it all coming together.
Adam Dewitz
WhatTheyThink.com
Print CEO Blog
A group of executives from Stevens Printing of Portland, Ore., came to drupa to investigate digital photo specialty products applications for their Xerox iGen3® 90 Digital Production Press. In just one afternoon, they found much of what they needed in three stations at the Xerox stand.
Their afternoon began with an hour-long presentation, “Digital Photos: how to break into the digital photo products market and take advantage of a $2B opportunity,” by Chris Jordan of Jordan & Jordan (to listen-in click the podcast button at the top of the page.) It's one of eight sessions in the Xerox Business Development Seminar series that runs throughout drupa, offering insights on key business opportunities.
In his talk, Jordan referenced a Xerox business tool that helps print providers initiate a photo products business, with a sample marketing plan and sample applications, templates and source files. Stop No. 2 for the Stevens entourage: the station where that Xerox ProfitAcccelerator Picture Me Profitable Kit was on display.
Their third and final stop was the photo specialty products section of the stand, where they saw the binding equipment and electronic creation and ordering systems they would need.
In the course of just a few hours, the Stevens team learned from an expert about the photo books opportunity, saw the equipment they would need to build a solution and perused the support tools that would help them establish the business.
Their mission to build a profitable new application was off to a smooth start.
Gina Testa
Vice President, Channel and Customer Business Development
Production Systems Group
Xerox Corporation
It’s great to see all the conversation about sustainability at drupa. But as a marketer, I think we have a lot more work to do to “green up” the way we present our offerings and communicate our brand value propositions. Xerox issued a news release today that summarizes some of what we’re trying to do. And we put together a factsheet that talks about how we tried to build our stand in an eco-friendly way.
It involves everything from the materials we use in our exhibit, to the lighting, collaterals and carpet – all the things that surround our products and services (which themselves are pretty green.) We also showed a video talking about sustainability through the eyes of the next generation of Xerox people. Check out the green gene here.
As proud as we are of the efforts we made to design a green booth, they are small steps that need to turn into greater leaps moving forward. In a related blog post, Andy Tribute pointed out similar efforts by many other leading printing companies at drupa. But more needs to be done. The International Consumer Electronics Show is America’s largest annual trade show of any kind. This year, CES made an effort to produce a carbon neutral show, working with CarbonFund.org to invest in energy efficiency, renewable energy and reforestation projects to offset the emissions created by every inch of CES space. The printing industry has spent a lot of time focusing on creating sustainable technology and services. And that’s the right place to start. Now we have to put additional focus on sustainable marketing. That means working with creative agency partners and printing partners – every link in the value chain – to ensure that we are marketing our offerings in ever-more sustainable ways. There’s no doubt that the next drupa will be even greener. And even though I’m barely over the jet lag from this year’s show, I can’t wait for 2012.
Ed Gala
Vice President
Corporate Marketing Services
Xerox Corporation
Note: to listen-in on Andy Tribute's comments on the "greening" of the print industry, click on the videos link to hear more.
Xerox's Shelley Sweeney gives a case study example of Staples - the North American-based office superstore about the value of building customer relationships through targeted, 1:1 marketing.
Listen-in on the conversation and click the podcast button at the top of the page.
Family-Owned Cadillo Comunicación Gráfica of Lima, Peru, produces direct marketing about real-estate investments that requires great trust from customers, because of the confidential nature of tax and property data. So when Cadillo tries something new with their clients, they document their case as well as possible.
That’s why they were so impressed by the detailed cost and benefits included in the Xerox 1:1 Lab case studies I presented at the Xerox Graphic Arts Premier Partner meeting in Dortmund, Germany - as part of Xerox's drupa activities. The meeting was for members of the Premier Partners — leading Xerox-equipped print providers — from developing markets.
The 1:1 Lab runs controlled tests to generate apples-to-apples comparisons of one-to-one marketing campaigns and traditional solicitations. The lab’s case histories include line-item costs and quantitative results, including return on investment.
For a business whose success is based upon the reputation it has built over two generations, having access to this type of hard data is extremely valuable. So much so, that brothers Elio and Percy Cadillo tracked me down at drupa the next day to get my presentation. I assured them it would be posted on the Premier Partners Web site within the next few days.
But that wasn’t good enough. They wanted it now. I paused. Then I grabbed my laptop, copied the files to a thumb drive, and waited while they transferred the material to their computer.
I understand. When something’s that valuable, you want to be able to go home with it.
Shelley Sweeney
Vice President, Data Processing Service Bureau and Direct Mail Segment for the Worldwide Graphic Communications Business, Xerox Corporation
Shelley Sweeney (below) presents to Premier Partners during drupa activities.
Xerox is certainly making a lot of news at this edition of drupa. I think one of our earlier announcements could wind up being one of our most enduring -- our move into printing digital packaging.
In the run-up to the show, Xerox and Stora Enso announced a packaging solution that uses our iGen3® 110 Digital Production Press to print variable data cartons and other packaging in short runs for the pharmaceutical market. It consists of an Epic CTi-635 varnishing unit with both aqueous and UV-coating options from Xerox, a KAMA die cutter with 580 x 400 mm sheet size and a stacker-conveyer unit from Stora Enso. That system is on display in the stand.
The system will help drug companies get new medicines to market faster and boost profits. Also on display - other packaging solutions, from boxes for contact lenses to chewing gum packages. Such applications point to a growing revenue opportunity for digital print providers. Why are these applications appealing?
First, they make a strong impression. Consumers are pleasantly surprised to see their name on a chewing gum pack or special targeted information about their prescription on a box.
Secondly, on-demand printing allows packing to be printed when needed, eliminating the need to keep large and costly inventories. And variable data can print individualized batch codes and other information allowing for an extra level of security for applications that require it.
Watch this space for more developments to come!
Tom Wetjen
Vice President, Worldwide Graphic Communications Industry
Production Systems Group
Xerox Corporation
 Patricia Pasadas of Publidisa (see photos below) came to the Xerox Graphic Arts Premier Partners meeting in Dortmund, Germany, as part of drupa, to tell the story of her company’s success in meeting the needs of publishers and authors.
She left with more than a dozen potential business partners. That’s what happens when you ask a room full of 75 leading digital print providers to be partners in an innovative, international business.
Publidisa, based in Seville, Spain, and with additional presence in Mexico and Argentina, provides a unique collection of publishing offerings: digital book manufacturing, e-book file generation and e-commerce outsourcing. “No one was offering solutions in these areas, so we went for it,” Pasadas said. The result: rapid growth the last few years.
Pasadas described three paths of future growth for the company: expanding its regional reach for publishing in Spanish, building a capability for publishing in English, and then taking on the rest of the world’. The firm’s preferred approach: growth through local partnerships. In the face of rapidly escalating energy costs, she said, “We want an international network to produce books close to the point of need, and avoid high shipping costs and delays.”
That’s when she gave an open invitation to attendees — Xerox Premier Partners from developing markets, such as Africa, Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Middle East — to explore becoming a partner of Publidisa. By evening, she had business cards from 14 companies.
The Xerox Premier Partners — a global network of 727 leading, Xerox-equipped print providers — is dedicated to developing new business opportunities through knowledge sharing, networking and business sharing.
At the meeting in Dortmund, Publidisa had the trifecta.
Randy Swope
Developing Markets Organization Premier Partner Coordinator
Xerox Corporation
Patricia Pasadas of Publidisa during and after her speech at the Premier Partner Event in Dortmund on May 28, 2008.
One of the key themes at drupa has been the environment. Almost every supplier has a green or sustainability approach and all have a document outlining what they are doing. This is a real difference from drupa 2004 where the green issue was hardly covered.
The following shows some of the things that are happening in this area at drupa. On June 5, 2008, World Environment Day, Heidelberger offset the environmental effects of all print products created in the course of the day at drupa. This included prepress, press, and postpress. All CO2 emissions generated indirectly on that day were offset by investing in a climate protection project complying with the internationally recognized Gold Standard through the Swiss charitable foundation myclimate. This will ensure that unavoidable emissions are offset by climate protection measures elsewhere. In concrete terms, in a region of India, electricity and heat will be generated from biomass that was previously burned on the fields as waste. This will benefit the environment and boost the income of local farmers.
The level of CO2 emissions calculated on World Environment Day was based on the amount of paper printed for demonstration purposes (over 70 tons), the total electrical power required by the equipment used (three MWh), printing plates, ink, coatings, alcohol, dampening solution additive, and cleaning agents.
Continue reading "The "Greening" of Print" »
To see everything being shown at drupa requires a disruption of the time-space continuum. There are something on the order of 1900 vendors showing their wares here at drupa over the 14 days the show runs. That means you would have to see 136 of them each day, and spend a bit over 4 minutes at each stand. And that assumes you can instantaneously transport yourself from one place to another, such as from the new buildings of 8a and 8b to the remote reaches of building 15 instead of making the trek across the complex, dodging trucks, shuttle buses and weaving through the herds of attendees.
Fortunately, no one has to see all of drupa and visiting a relative handful of companies will satisfy your needs. But what to see? It's truly a case of so much to do, so little time, even if you actually dedicated two full weeks of your life to the event. What is important is an individual matter, so the trick is spending time in the right places.
What this digital drupa clearly demonstrates is that digital printing is here to stay --and growing. It is not a curiosity or a pretender to the throne of offset. It is a powerful, effective and above all profitable way to put words and pictures on a page and is perfectly compatible with offset printing. It is proven to be an ideal way for printers to extend what they do and generate new business for both offset and digital presses. That makes this drupa a place to think about what all the elements of digital printing mean for your business, especially if you have both offset and digital technology. I've seen a lot here over the past week and there are two areas of products and technologies to see that can help a print business be more agile, more responsive to customer needs and more competitive.
First, look at lots of print engines, both those that fit the way your business works today and ones that can help transform it into what you'd like it to be tomorrow. There are no longer any significant quality concerns with digital printing. While not all digital presses produce "offset quality" images (a truly arbitrary term), they all produce sellable images that satisfy customer needs, which is what's important at the end of the day. As you examine them, look beyond image quality and even speed to overall productivity and finishing capabilities. Most of the new systems shown here at drupa can increase the volume of work you produce each day, raising your topline even as greater efficiency increases the bottom line.
Also helping the bottom line, especially for printers with both offset and digital operations, are many ways to better integrate your workflows so that jobs can easily be switched between offset and digital devices. Nearly all the makers of both types of presses have rolled out new software that enables jobs to be routed all but seamlessly between types of machines. Check this stuff out: Some it has a real "Wow factor." Many printers I've been talking with do this already, but all have areas where they need greater efficiency and are looking for answers. Many of the solutions printers need today are here in the stands of offset and digital vendors alike.
So for most printers at Planet drupa, there are not 1900 vendors but maybe a couple dozen --easily seen in just a few days. And by spending a generous amount of time at each one it is easy to see how the products and technologies being rolled out here can help change their businesses.
Good shopping!
Noel Ward
Managing Editor, WhatTheyThink.com
Director, Brimstone Hill Associates
How does a print provider approach a corporate brand owner without alienating their agency?
That question was posed to me during my presentation in Dortmund, Germany to about 75 leading Xerox-equipped print providers from developing markets who are members of the Xerox Graphic Arts Premier Partners. They were participating in a daylong meeting on business development as part of our drupa activities, and I was presenting on creative agencies, a great, but oft- overlooked opportunity.
The question, from Eduardo Achach, chairman of the board, Mega Direct, Mexico City, typifies the hesitancy print providers feel about approaching creative agencies. In North America alone, creatives buy $26 billion in print annually, yet 85 percent of print providers don’t call on them.
I recommended to Achach that he approach the brand owner’s agencies with concepts for working together to increase awareness of digital printing. Get on their team.
In fact, my entire presentation was relevant to his question. I offered advice on identifying the agencies that are most likely to work with you, on the research you should do on them, on the applications that resonate with them, and on techniques for building relationships outside the traditional sales cycle. I told attendees to become insiders by getting involved with the local chapter of an ad association or creative tools users groups. Go to their meetings and speak at their events. It’s an excellent way to make contacts and build trust.
With this preparation, when you do approach an agency, you’ll be sure to bring a relevant, creative concept to the table.
Bob Wagner, Vice President
Xerox Creative Services Business
and Premier Partners Program
--------------
Eduardo Achach, chairman of the board, Mega Direct, Mexico City, asks his question of Bob Wagner: How does a print provider approach a corporate brand owner without alienating their agency?
Xerox's Bob Wagner gives tips direct from the customer on what it takes to earn their print business.
Listen-in to the podcast by clicking here.
Andreas Weber, Global Communications GmbH, talks about joining print services providers who are growing their digital business by targeting the lucrative untapped ad agency and design services marketplace.
Listen-in to the podcast by clicking here as this renowned industry consultant describes the big opportunity that awaits!
Horst-Rainer Kehmeier of PSG GAI GmbH, Hamburg, Germany, stopped by the Xerox stand at drupa to see what was new — and left with a new plan to help one of his clients better sell digital printing.
Horst, a concessionaire (sales agent), spoke with some of us at the Xerox exhibit about how he’d used the Xerox ProfitAccelerator Digital Readiness Assessment tool to assess the relative strengths of one of his Xerox DocuColor 5000 Digital Press clients, Hamann Kolling Gmbh. The result: they identified an opportunity to improve the firm’s digital sales skills.
Subsequently, Hamann Kolling agreed to have Kehmeier work with them to hire and train a new sales rep to focus on digital printing and marketing services. Eventually they selected a candidate who was a novice in printing, but who had a wealth of marketing experience. Horst says the strategy is paying off, and digital sales are growing.
Which brings us to what’s new in the Xerox booth: six of the core business development tools in the Xerox ProfitAccelerator Digital Business Resources have been translated into six languages, including German. Horst quickly recognized that one of the tools, the ProfitAcccelerator Digital Sales Management Kit, was a good resource for taking their business to the next level in digital print sales.
What’s new at the Xerox stand turned out to be what’s new in his client’s business development plan.
Susan L. Weiss
Manager
Worldwide Customer Business Development, Xerox Corporation
Industry analyst Andy Tribute weighs-in on the "green" efforts of print! Click here to view the video.
Searching desperately for the next big thing, or the latest word-bite, commentators will attempt to label drupa the [fill in the blank] drupa, hoping for their 3 milliseconds of google fame. (That’s the wait time for results after which searchers are said to get bored.)
While this may indeed be a “green” drupa, it’s tough to lay that nickname on a two-week event that has the carbon footprint of small country.
But visitors will be searching for greener solutions, to be sure. And the energy involved in reproduction of images will weigh on the balance scales of many visitors.
Shades of green
Looking for the sustainable print solution, really looking, will mean examining the total package. That’s the energy used by the print device, its inherent power demands and resource consumption. But a more “nuanced” green will look further, at the envelope around the print process—the conveyance of raw materials (paper) to and from the print center, the delivery of finished goods. So a print operation in a LEEDs certified building on a machine that uses more energy, but provides finished goods close to the point of usage may end up greener than a product printed with less energy during manufacture, but trucked around afterward.
Check out the total package as you search for your green drupa. You may be surprised at the results.
Bill Esler
Editor in Chief
Graphic Arts Monthly
Xerox has been telling customers to visit them at drupa to see the “hottest” applications. This took on a new meaning Tuesday, and I’d like to set the record straight on what happened. The exhaust system on the UV coater that is part of our new integrated, inline cut-sheet digital packaging solution caught fire.
The exhaust system, while not the set-up used in a customer setting, was configured to operate safely in a trade show. Accidents happen. At drupa. At customer sites. Everything was handled quickly to ensure the safety of those in the booth and there were no injuries and no need to evacuate. In fact, the fire inspector was fine with us starting up the system again Tuesday evening.
While this is certainly not the way we intended to “spark” interest in our new digital packaging solution, I do encourage you to stop over and see this application and others.
Tom Wetjen
Vice President, Worldwide Graphic Communications Industry
Production Systems Group
Xerox Corporation
Chris Jordan, Jordan & Jordan, spends 50 minutes talking about how to break into the digital photo products market and how to take advantage of the $2B opportunity. Is the 6 x 4 photo market dead? The digital photo explosion has opened up new opportunities for printing. Photo books are set to revolutionize the photo print market and it's all happening on digital color printers.
Click the podcast button at the top of the page and listen-in on the conversation.
I've talked with several equipment vendors over the past couple of days and the word from them is that after five days this drupa is proving to be a successful one in terms of sales. HP, Kodak, Océ, and Xerox are all reporting strong orders for both single and multiple machines and some have also sold much of the equipment shown in their stands. All have also received plenty of interest in the new technologies they are showing. In addition to the new machines being rolled out here, vendors are showing technology demos or works in progress while others are measuring interest in concept machines the vendors think may fill a need --or niche-- in the market.
If One is Good, are Two are Better?
One of these is duplex printing, or perfecting, as offset printers call it. While continuous feed print engines have long been joined together when two-sided printing is needed --primarily on transactional documents and books, cut-sheet machines have typically been solo performers, printing both sides of a page. Yet in the past year or so, joining two monochrome devices as perfecting presses has become an option for effectively doubling the throughput of a given machine. Xerox began this shift with the melding of two monochrome Nuvera 144 production presses to create the Nuvera 288 and Kodak has announced a tandem monochrome system for 2009. Others will no doubt follow, probably from Japan.
But these days, color is what is important to customers and vendors alike. The tandem approach is showing up here, too, as evidenced by the iGen3-based ConceptColor 220 being shown in an alcove of the Xerox stand here at drupa, partly as a demonstration of what could be done, but also as a way to test customer interest. According to Xerox, response to the concept machine has been positive, especially among existing iGen customers, a goodly number of whom have two or more machines already. I'm betting this the first of other tandem color boxes from other suppliers, simply because of the technical barriers in getting the needed color quality at substantially higher speeds in a single cut-sheet device.
Although I like such configurations in principle, I'd still rather have more speed in a single box. Tandem cut sheet systems seem like a complex and less than elegant way to deliver greater throughput, but the upside to too good to ignore. By doubling throughput capability, a print provider better can meet the demands of ever tightening print windows, take in more jobs and add value for their customers. And they have redundancy when one of the engines is down. So even if tandems are only place holders until faster systems are available, they help meet today's production needs and let printers take on jobs they might otherwise have to turn away.
Speed is good. More is better.
Noel Ward
Managing Editor, WhatTheyThink.com
Director, Brimstone Hill Associates.
It is a sad day when one of the key members of the digital graphic arts communities dies. David Watson, the founder of Ultimate Technographics and the inventor of digital imposition died of a heart attack at drupa on Saturday May 31. I have had the privilege of knowing David for many years and found him to be a true gentleman, a real innovator and a person happy to share his knowledge and vision with others in the industry. His development of Impostrip the first digital imposition product in the early 1980s was perhaps the key development in changing prepress from a manual to an automated computer operation. Prior to Impostrip, imposition of pages into film flats for printing was a skilled, time-consuming manual task. Digital imposition changed the industry by both improving the quality of printing through totally accurate imposed output and allowing printing to become both more productive and more cost effective.
Andrew Tribute
Attribute Associates
Industry analyst Peter Muir, president, Bizucate, Inc., delivers a 50-minute presentation on developing a profitable digital business. He shares how to transform a company from a print provider to a marketing communication service provider -all to increase sales, volume and profits.
Click the podcast button at the top of the page to listen-in on the conversation!
So OK. after cruising drupa and seeing what's going on in inkjet outside of the usual large format and desktop stuff, this toner-head is willing to admit that inkjet has a lot going |
