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By Noel Ward, Editor@Large On any given week one news source or another runs a story about Amazon. The stories go on and on about the company’s outsized influence, its enormous market capitalization, the impact its facilities have on real estate values, local infrastructure, and more. They all...

Thanks for the link. You're right, processing is the next step, and some of it is already happening, as your link shows. There's a lot of book production and direct mail are already heavily automated from job in to ship and mail. Automation is going to be more and more important is printing...

By Noel Ward, Editor@Large, PrintPlanet.com What is time worth? This means your time or that of your CSRs, prepress technicians, press and finishing equipment operators, and even the people in shipping. What is their time worth, and how do you translate those hours into payroll, the dollars...

By Noel Ward, Editor@Large If you have medium- to large-size Ricoh presses and printers and didn’t go—and you probably did get an invitation—you missed an opportunity to learn how to make your operation more efficient and profitable. I’m talking about Ricoh Interact 2019, held June 5th and...

by Noel Ward, Editor @ Large Unlike many industry events there was no sense of déjà vu when coming to the third edition of Xeikon’s Café in North America. Every one of these events has been an improvement from the one before and the level of value keeps increasing. Why anyone who has or is...

By Noel Ward, Editor@Large In the average week (as if there is such a thing!) how many different jobs and projects are on your plate? If yours is like many shops these days, your work in process may span offset, digital, and large format work, along with direct mail, data management, maybe some...

By Noel Ward, Editor@Large For the past few years one of the questions I’ve gotten from print providers running toner presses is along the lines of, “How much volume should I have before I move to inkjet?” It’s an excellent query and it shows that people are thinking. Then there are the ones...

By Noel Ward, Editor@Large Does any of this sound familiar? A few times each week a customer shows up or sends in a file that needs a lot of love. It’s usually work they don’t want to do (or can’t do) themselves and involves making sure a stack of pages will be professionally printed. Those...

mellowyellow, Sales people are always baffled! They think whatever they sell is perfect and can do anything. You have to talk with the technical guys. This can take some effort. KM and Konica have doubtless tested lots of foils and substrates so they probably have an answer.

Have you called KM about this? You are probably not the first KM-1 owner to encounter this. I suspect a specific foil is required that is compatible with the ink.

by Noel Ward, Editor@Large Why ever would you want to automate your operation? After all, it seems far too complex, costs money, involves a lot of your people, will absorb significant time, and you figure you probably don’t need it. And then you run out of excuses. I used to work with a guy...

By Noel Ward, Editor@Large The title above is not intended as an existential question, but as the relevance of print continues to evolve it is worth consideration. Of interest here is a technology called Augmented Reality and its relationship to print. Is there one? Definitely. At PRINT 18 I...

Nice work! Very informative video.

By Noel Ward, Editor@Large Many printers I talk with say they worry that some jobs may be handled without the attention to detail they claim is part of their company culture. Ensuring that such care is taken is not always an easy task, especially once a job leaves prepress and lands in...

PIRA is about right although their methodologies can leave something to be desired. I disagree with their projections, but digital share in packaging will still remain low. BTW, the Labelexpo I went to in Chicago (Sept 25-27) had a lot of both digital and flexo presses on the floor. There is...

by Noel Ward, Editor@Large The Chicago suburb of Rosemont, Illinois is probably not on anyone’s bucket list of must-see locations, yet every two years the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center is packed to the roof trusses with label and flexible packaging pros looking for new technologies that...

By Noel Ward, Editor@Large Just about all the major equipment and software vendors these days hold annual events to connect with customers and prospects, talk about new technologies, and try to bring a personal touch to what can otherwise be a somewhat distant relationship. These shindigs span...

Color is like politics or religion. It matters more to some people than others. Color is like politics or religion. It matters more to some people than others. Color accuracy IS important, but although achieving perfect color was once the holy grail of print production, the world has changed...

By Noel Ward, Editor@Large Chances are, you’re seeing more and more jobs that require full color—it may be even most of the ones coming in, given the rapid increase in digital short-run printing. With that demand comes the need for color consistency, reliability and predictability, so you have...

By Noel Ward, Editor@Large Owners of small to mid-size businesses—meaning just about any type of print provider—know first-hand how tough it can be to keep a business profitable and moving forward. You’re always looking to get the most favorable returns on every deal and you try not to leave...