For those of you on the flexographic side of printing, Ron Schroder needs no introduction. He has been working in the industry for just about four decades! His career includes many years working in flexographic prepress supply as well as more recently in the sales of flexographic printing presses and related equipment. He is an involved member of our industry, serving as Chairman of the Canadian Flexographic Training Committee (CFTC), a member of the board of the Canadian Printing Industries Scholarship Trust Fund, and an executive board member of the Mackenzie Printery & Newspaper Museum. With retirement on his horizon we could not let him get away without picking his brain about your favourite topics!
What is your stance on offset vs. digital?
I am a flexographer so perhaps this question is a bit unfair. It is a fact that offset is seeing a decline, while digital presses continue to get faster and more cost effective. There is a lot of interest in digital package printing today. In fact, we at Canflexographics are very excited to be representing Xeikon on this front. However, while the digital technologies are getting exponentially faster there is always going to be a place for high volume/high speed work, ideally suited to the flexographic process. Further, one cannot discount the incredible advances in modern flexographic press technology. There is equipment that is ready to run within one revolution of the central impression (CI) drum, utilizing digitally driven RFID registration and impression systems to get things moving along with minimum waste. So if I were to rephrase, digital package printing and traditional flexographic printing will continue to coexist.
Where do you stand in the ‘(our world is going) paperless’ debate?
Don’t believe it for an instant! People still prefer to have a hard copy of just about anything. I believe that people are tactile and that is hard-wired within us. When someone hands you something printed it stands out as being yours, an individual piece. Digital media is a wonderful tool but it carries no emotional appeal. My ‘geek’ may be showing, but even in the faraway future of Star Trek, Jean-Luc Picard is still carrying books!
What’s one problem that the printing industry could have already solved but hasn’t?
Standardized training and apprenticeships that cross all print disciplines and provinces are much needed by the Canadian print industry. It is wonderful to see secondary education involved, but something ultra-practical at the hands-on level is necessary across all printing disciplines as well. The Flexographic Technical Association’s FIRST (Flexographic Image Reproduction Specifications & Tolerances) has become a wonderful resource in flexo but I’m thinking bigger. A major issue for flexo is that jobs are designed without most designers having any knowledge of flexographic printing; their ambitious designs simply cannot be reproduced flexographically. To that point, it’s great that designers can access the FIRST Design Guide for free.
Only 8-10% of printers are profit leaders. What do you believe makes them different?
I do not think that this statistic is specific to print alone. All business sectors have these strong leaders. Part of it is simply good general business planning. All successful businesses are early investors in emerging technologies, fully and continually train their people and utilize lean manufacturing techniques. Basically, they have a solid plan for the future. Without a good and continually evolving plan, it will be difficult to continue to succeed in this world of rapid change.
What do you miss about the “good old days”?
I miss the days when people communicated more directly, when you called someone and they picked up the phone – generally polite business etiquette. Today telephone calls, voicemails and e-mails commonly go unanswered.
What keeps you up at night?
An enlarged prostate! But seriously and more to topic, the general decline of all types of manufacturing in this country is our most serious economic problem. There was a time when we made things locally. Today it seems that anything and everything can and is being sourced out of country. The scary part of this for a flexographer is that if nothing is being made here there is no need to print packaging, labels, marketing brochures etc. I think we need to get serious about supporting local manufacturing both as consumers and as a political priority.
What makes you happy to come into work in the morning?
I love the printing industry, and flexography more specifically. I have grown a career out of an industry that was little-known when I started. Today flexo has become a real competitor and consistently leads all printing disciplines in global growth. Having said this, I must admit that I am looking forward to my retirement at the end of this year!
For the Record – Ron Schroder
