Blog

Printing Industries of America Blog

Subscribe to the RSS Feed

Digital Printing Council

Office Machines Vs. Production Presses
Posted: 02/26/2013 by Mr Samuel G. Shea

We recently posed the following question to the members of our LinkedIn group (Digital Printing Council): How do you distinguish between “convenience printing” or office digital copying equipment and “production” digital presses. In our post, we asked if anyone made this distinction solely on the basis of speed or pages per minute (PPM). We received a couple of in-depth responses that explained why simple PPM is not an effective means of distinguishing production equipment from office equipment.

John Conley, Vice President Commercial Print and Publishing, Xerox Corporation

The nomenclature of "production" versus "office is not driven by speed. It is driven by durability. Equipment that goes into a production environment needs to have the ability be up and running for the time frame the associated printer has designated as his working production period. This could be one...

Read More
General

Staples Advantage Is Here for Printing Industries of America
Posted: 02/19/2013 by Ms Megan Flynn
Printing Industries of America has teamed up with Staples Advantage to offer an unbelievable cost‐saving program exclusively for its members through Printing Industries of America affiliates. With this Buying Power program, your business is eligible to save on office products and more via the Staples Advantage program.

This program allows you to leverage the buying power of all participating members through Printing Industries of America affiliates. Staples Advantage can help you reduce expenses through our competitive prices on more than 180,000 products available through the proprietary Order.StaplesAdvantage.com® website. The website allows you to place orders, track orders 24 hours a day, check product availability, review pricing, set up reusable shopping lists, and make returns.

You can count on Staples to provide you with:
- Significant savings—an average of 55% off of list prices on office product purchases
- Online ordering, returns, and...
Read More
General

Do More with Less—Three Steps to Creating and Maintaining Lean
Posted: 02/19/2013 by Ms Megan Flynn
Many companies say they want to increase their company’s competitiveness and accumulate improvement goals more quickly. They want to maintain higher profits, increase production, and reduce waste. But where do you start?

Lantech, a leading U.S.-based manufacturer of shrink wrap equipment used in the printing industry, turned to Lean Manufacturing over a decade ago in order to regain its competitive edge. It created a successful Lean environment and maintained it, becoming a benchmark for the application of Lean practices within U.S. manufacturing.

Here is Lantech’s advice to other manufacturers:
1. Implement Standard Work and Kaizen
  Lean Manufacturing is a management system born out of the philosophy and practices of the Toyota Production System—considered by many to be the world’s best manufacturing company—and have since been adopted by North American companies to...
Read More
Digital Printing Council

Augmented Reality Update
Posted: 02/14/2013 by Mr Samuel G. Shea

Marketers are always looking for ways to get more from their print budgets. Historically, printers have responded through the use of customized print, and more recently, quick response (QR) codes. One of the latest innovations in print is augmented reality, which allows for the creation of unique 3-D experiences that add another dimension to print.

Printing Industries of America’s Joe Marin has updated a popular Digital Printing Council white paper on augmented reality. This white paper, which is free to all Printing Industries of America members, provides an overview of augmented reality technologies and highlights their relevance to print. New information includes an updated tutorial and additional resources. Members can download the new white paper here.

Additionally, Marin has created a series of video tutorials to accompany his white paper. The first three videos of a planned six-part series are currently up...

Read More
General

Big Rewards for Small Printers in the Premier Print Awards
Posted: 02/14/2013 by Ms Megan Flynn

The Premier Print Awards are the most highly anticipated awards competition each year. The program is one of the most prestigious international print competitions in the graphic communications industry. Thousands of entries are received from all over the world from some of the best printers in the industry. All entrants are competing to be awarded the Best of Category, or “Benny” and to be honored for their excellent craftsmanship.

All types of printers are encouraged to enter. With more than 100 categories, a company is certain to find one that best suits their needs—including company size and specialty printing. While winning pieces are based on the outstanding printing that was done, one group in particular that has enjoyed success in the competition has been smaller-sized companies. Companies with 50 or fewer employees have been known to win big in past years.

Our awards program offers sub-categories for smaller companies...

Read More
Digital Printing Council

Postal Service Pushes for Five-Day Delivery
Posted: 02/06/2013 by Mr Samuel G. Shea

The official word came out today that the USPS is planning to move to a five-day delivery schedule beginning in August, eliminating carrier routes on Saturdays.

This does not mean that the USPS will be completely dormant on Saturdays. Package delivery will continue, P.O. boxes will be filled, and Post Offices that are currently open on Saturdays will remain open. The package delivery element of the plan is noteworthy, because this part of the agency’s business has increased 14% since 2010. Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe stated that the elimination of Saturday carrier routes should save around $2 billion annually.

There is some question on the authority of the USPS to make the move to five-day delivery. Congress previously has nixed the idea in appropriations bills; however, the temporary spending measure under which the federal government is currently operating may allow for the USPS to make the switch without Congressional authority.

Read More
General

High-Quality—The Future of Print
Posted: 02/05/2013 by Mr Kyle Grady

Andrew Davis, Chief Strategy Officer & Co-Founder of Tippingpoint Labs, and author of Brandscaping, will deliver the keynote presentation at the 2013 Integrated Print Forum. Davis, whose research has resulted in the creation of innovative online metrics, will inspire attendants to re-think the print, digital, and mobile strategies that they and their customers employ—and consider aligning them as a content continuum instead of disparate and unrelated initiatives. We caught up with Davis recently, and he was kind enough to share his thoughts about print’s role in the content continuum.

How can print help content generators (marketers, publishers, etc.) differentiate themselves?

Over the last five years marketers and publishers have invested boatloads of resources in creating digital assets, and in the process they’...

Read More
General

Troubleshoot, Control, Optimize
Posted: 02/04/2013 by Ms Megan Flynn

Troubleshoot, Control, and Optimize. Those three words are vital to running a successful printing operation. Without an educated workforce, your press crew may be practicing wasteful activities and not optimizing time and material use. With the upcoming workshop, Extreme Offset: Troubleshoot, Control, Optimize, those wasteful activities—and how to solve them—will be brought to light.

Presenters—Lloyd DeJidas, Director, Graphic Services and Facility Manager, and Greg Workman, Pressroom and Bindery Supervisor—will provide the steps to turn any pressroom into one that will increase job throughput while printing higher quality, more consistent color with less downtime, waste, and spoilage through the process of Troubleshooting, Controlling, and Optimizing.

Troubleshoot
Attendees will learn the skills to identify root causes of printing problems and how...

Read More
General

Live Life in Color—and Share Your Knowledge too!
Posted: 01/31/2013 by Mr Kyle Grady

What is possible with G7 mythology? Instructor, Dave Dezzutti, explains.

Dave Dezzutti is all about managing color. He starts his day with a coffee and a copy of the latest digital printing magazine before beginning his work in prepress preflighting, proofing, and operating several different digital workflow systems for Printing Industries of America’s in-house production facility. He has spent 30 years in the industry and is now a Technology and Research Analyst and G7^® Expert for Printing Industries of America. So what does Dave think about leading the hands-on G7 Digital Press Operator Training Program this April? He couldn’t feel more at home.

Why do you...

Read More
General

What Makes an Exceptional Leader?
Posted: 01/16/2013 by Ms Megan Flynn

“There are three kinds of leaders. Those that tell you what to do. Those that allow you to do what you want. And Lean leaders that come down to the work and help you figure it out.” – John Shook

What do you think classifies a person as an exceptional leader? One measure is that a person provides the motivation, knowledge, and tools that result in a company’s operation constantly improving. These are the individuals we want to honor with the 2013 Managing for Improvement Award. This award recognizes managers who make quality and efficiency a top priority—they are the ones making sure their employees are productive and safe and that their customers are satisfied. They inspire people and ensure that these...

Read More