Someone recently described the craft of printing as “putting dead dinosaurs on dead trees,” the idea being that dinosaurs decompose into crude oil, a key ink ingredient. This clever description is also troubling when you consider that some of the print production processes in wide use today may themselves be nearing extinction. The print economy appears to be on the rebound, but as export pressures, the Internet, digital workflow, and other disruptive technologies continue to transform the production landscape, it’s worth a look into the bindery to see what may lay ahead.
CIM, JDF, CIP4, and JAA (Just Another Acronym)
Industry forecasters predict the end of print as we know it unless we adopt computer-integrated workflows driven by job description format files that have been formally approved by the International Cooperation for the Integration of Processes in Prepress, Press, and Postpress (CIP4). But your short-term goals are probably more tangible: you’re just trying to improve makeready times on your saddlestitching or perfect binding lines so you can handle short-run work efficiently. Or you may need to finish variable pre-collated sheets from your new digital colour press without any trade-off in finish quality. You know you need automation, but you’re not sure to what extent.
There’s good news and bad news. The bad news is it’s probably short-sighted to invest in any postpress equipment that isn’t JDF-enabled. But the good news is you’re under no obligation to implement JDF today—it’s not an all-or-nothing proposition—and it shouldn’t cost you more. Most leading postpress equipment manufacturers have a CIP4 game plan that provides some level of step-wise JDF implementation. You should be able to achieve automated setups today, then plug into a fully integrated MIS workflow when, and if, you’re ready. Generally speaking, buying “JDF-ready” equipment shouldn’t carry a heavy surcharge, though you’ll probably have some added costs when you start integrating hardware and software.
Justify to Buy
Different printers’ approaches to bindery investment says a great deal about where the print market is heading.
It used to be fairly simple to justify a postpress investment. You could (maybe you did) do the math on the back of an envelope. N units of books/booklets finished per day/week/month, with a labour burden of y, with an average unit resale price of $x, an equation applied to both old and new processes. If you negotiate a good buy price, swing a reasonable lease rate, get a fair trade-in value on your old gear, and end up making more money over a reasonable timeframe, then you’d likely proceed.
A host of other factors come into the equation today. Setup/makeready time can be huge, depending on how many different jobs per day/week/month you have or expect to attract with the new equipment. And the mix keeps changing as overall run lengths decline.
Customers are also expecting ever-quicker turnarounds, so the new process needs to get products out the door or on the next process as rapidly as possible. Labour variables are changing too. You may be unable to count on (or afford) the same level of expertise to run the new equipment, or a different skill set may be needed. And as digital imaging becomes more common, you may need to support pre-collated output as well. The complex spreadsheets designed to consider such factors prefer eclipse envelopes as their justification tool.
A detailed review of investment decisions is a healthy trend, since printers need to understand their real cost on each job to stay profitable. Ideally, anything you can measure would roll-up into the equation—setup time, run time, downtime due to preventative maintenance or equipment failure, labour, waste, energy cost, and the list goes on. Only by keeping close tabs on bindery shop floor metrics can printers determine real job costs, and thus increase efficiency and address staffing or equipment issues.
Bindery metrics will be supported by systems like the Standard Horizon i2i Bindery Control System, which captures real-time job statistics and also provides JDF setups, job management, and production scheduling. Expect to see increasing levels of digital control in the binder, on-board automation with servo-motor control, networked systems that capture job statistics from several machines for cost review and analysis, and the ability to exchange data with MIS systems for enterprise-wide visibility and standardized, repeatable processes. Digital control will become the de facto standard in the bindery, just as it has in upstream print production processes, and just as it has in other industries where CIM (Computer-integrated manufacturing) has transformed business practices.
Adopting CIM
Speaking of CIM, one trusted industry expert has commented that many CTP users do not use ink fountain presets, despite their importance to CTP return on investment. To the extent this is true, how quickly are printers willing to adopt CIM as an industry-wide practice that extends into the bindery? Stories abound of operators resisting new technology, believing it invites management scrutiny or is a substitute for their specialized skill set. Whatever technical barriers to widespread CIM adoption there may be—interoperability may be the biggest, resulting in what have been dubbed “islands of automation”—cultural barriers are an equally daunting problem. Even so, CIM may be one of the most effective ways for printers to thrive amidst rising costs and declining margins.
One-Pass Convenience
Some forward-looking printers have original thoughts about their potential finishing investments. For example, one customer recently made a significant investment in production digital color printing (100 pages per minute). They aim to capture a share of the highly variable short-run color market with a value-added product that requires a higher production skill set but also has higher margins and (they hope) encourages greater customer loyalty.
This printer wanted a saddle stitching system that would make their digitally imaged booklets indistinguishable from offset-printed jobs finished on their conventional long-run signature gathering and saddle binding line, and they wanted to minimize off-line production steps. The customer opted for a Standard Horizon system with an all-in-one near-line solution that fed the pre-collated sheets (with barcode integrity checking), scored the sets, stitched, folded, and finally three-knife-trimmed the booklets for edge-to-edge color. There are less-costly combinations that could produce the work, but the customer placed a very high value on the benefit of a one-pass process—especially useful with tight production windows for personalized printing. The system also supported short-run conventional offset work, since the same finisher was equipped with suction flat-sheet collator towers. This customer didn’t use lengthy analysis to justify the purchase. They simply responded to their customers’ key finishing requirements: highly automated setup, application flexibility, technical reliability, and no compromise in end-product quality when compared to output from their incumbent long-run systems.
Are You a Printer?
Some customers have stopped referring to themselves as “printers,” particularly the highly digital shops, even though their bindery equipment mix closely resembles what you’d find under the roof of a conventional graphic arts shop. It’s also true of businesses that receive most of their jobs through a web storefront (e.g., mimeo.com, colorcentriccorp.com) or provide on-demand publishing services (e.g., ipublish.com, lulu.com). For these companies, “dots on paper” is just one element in a string of supply chain and fulfillment services they provide for their clients, and this community’s needs may differ over time from those of tradi
tional printers. As the print business model evolves, how and where finishing value is added may shift as well.
Industry Rebound Benefits All
PIA/GATF has reported that 2004 was a solid recovery year for the print industry—shipments were up U.S. $4.4 billion, despite continued fall-off in printing plants (down 1,538) and industry employment (down 18,000). At this writing, 2005 shipments were up another 3.4%, ink-on-paper up 2.4%, toner-based print up 5.4%, and most printers (56%) reported an increase in sales volume. These figures bode well for the strongest bindery equipment manufacturers who improve their businesses as they continue rolling out innovative, new finishing solutions that address the short-run, quick-turn, and digital print requirements of the market.
Reprinted with permission from the PIA/GATF 2006 Forecast: Technology, Trends, Tactics. Copyright 2006 by the Printing Industries of America/Graphic Arts Technical Foundation (www.gain.net). All rights reserved.