This place will generate attendance

If you are going to have a conference about software and automation in the printing industry, having it in Las Vegas is a great way to get people to come and act interested. I’m not a gambler or a big fan of Vegas, but since EFI (Electronics for Imaging) has their yearly Connect Conference in Las Vegas, and I had some very specific issues and concepts I wanted to get my arms around, I went. EFI is the company that is responsible for the software (Printsmith) that runs our company from an administrative side, and they are always building and expanding on the original program. What do I mean by that? Printsmith started out as an estimating and order writing program in the mid 1990’s, but over the last 15 years they have added a scheduling module, a shop floor data collection module, a report writer (very powerful), they host out Internet Store front, plus they own and develop all the Fiery Rips & Controllers, which drive a big percentage of digital printing today. So this was our chance to meet face to face with the developers and decision makers.

I won’t get into all of the details, but I did walk away with a strong vision of where they are headed, and hence were we are headed if we let their software help to drive us. Today’s print shop isn’t just a press, cutter and folder any more, and we all know that price drives printing more than ever before, along with quality and service.  A big part of all the talks centered around automation and how to apply it to cut touch points in all of our processes, which drives down prices, but realizing we still need to maintain quality and offer above average service is a key not to forget. All I will say is that I talked to a lot of people, sat through a lot of classes and learned a lot. In other words, I have a lot to do. Getting the software customized for our shop is just the first part, (keep in mind we have been customizing it for 7 years). Once set up, everybody needs to understand how it works so we can integrate people with process. If anybody is ever interested in learning how an enterprise software package for a print shop works, let me know and I’ll give you a first hand demo. I’m actually amazed with where our industry is going and what a (surviving) print shop in 2015 will look like.

Vegas is a wild city that never sleeps. Like I said, I’m not a big Vegas fan,  but it is what it is. A great thing about conferences like this is meeting and talking with peers that are in the same situation that you are; I have developed a friendship with some shop owners from Louisville, KY as well as Nashville, TN. By being this far apart we are all willing to share best practices and not feel like we are stepping on each other’s feet. To hear how other printing companies are handling today’s issues is a big help.

Huge Turbines that power the South West

So after spending 3 days at the conference, 3 of us headed out to see Hoover Dam. I’ve gotten to be an advocate of going to the nearest National Park or engineering wonder like Hoover Dam if you are close by. We toured the power plant and stood over a pipe that had 80 million gallons of water per second going through it. Hoover Dam supplies power for a lot of Arizona, Southern California and Nevada, it generates more that 4 Billion Killowatt-hours per year. Pretty impressive statistics, even more impressive to see.

I also took a little side trip to Death Valley National Park before I caught my plane back. I did not realize that Death Valley is the largest National Park in terms of acreage outside of Alaska. The highest temperature there was 134 degrees, the second highest temperature ever recorded on earth. The lowest point below sea level in the western hemisphere is also there at Badwater (282 feet below sea level). Believe it or not, there is a resort (Furnace Creek Ranch and Resort) that has a swimming pool, a golf course and tennis courts right in the middle of Death Valley and its been there since something like 1920. Once again, pretty impressive place but I’m glad to be back in Dayton, Ohio.

Sand Dunes at Death Valley

Digital printing has really start to hit it’s stride at Oregon Printing over the last year. Since we added a new Xerox Digital Press last year, our digital print sales are consistently growing. It’s great for those quantities between 1 and 500; some of the things that we are doing consistantly on the digital are

• Full color tri fold and by-fold brochures
• Full color sales sheets to go into pocket folders
• 1/sided and 2/sided color business cards on up to 100# stock
• Color Programs and event books
• Wedding invitations and Holiday cards
• Full color, full bleed posters up to 12 x 18

Color programs rolling off the new machine

I ofter hear about people that go to their local office supply or nationwide quick print chains and they have great equipment but their staffs are untrained in color management and as a result they don’t get the consistency they are looking for. We have put a lot of training into our digital print operators who understand commercial color management to begin with (they come from the pressroom and prepress), and Xerox has also given us a lot of support in that effort. The result is consistent color from job to job, which is a real advantage for customers when they need to establish a trust level that jobs will consistently look good.

Plus, I can’t say how sweet it is to have trained Adobe output experts on staff.

So check it out, it just gets better every day.

It was not long ago that ordering larger quantities of most printed material was the best way to bring the per unit cost down on most print runs. It worked like this: most of the cost was in the set-up,  film, plates, tight color registration, all those set-up things that took time and a high level of skill.  Then, once you had it running, you might as well run double the amount because the press was running smoothly and that second 10,000 (or whatever the number was) would be a lot more efficient, thus leading to an overall lower price per piece. Those days were great for printers, most customers would gladly order the extra quanitity just to get the price down. There were down sides though: a lot of the time elements changed like the address, phone number or something and all that inventory was trashed, or somebody did not keep good inventory numbers and who knows what was supposed to be there. It also forced print customers to keep a fair amount of capitol wrapped up in inventory and somebody to store all this stuff.

My, how things have changed today. I’m not saying that ordering more does not still reduce the per unit cost, but our make ready costs have dropped so significantly that the game has changed. The first reality is the digital imaging revolution. Every image we print today starts as some sort of digital image. We can send that digital image to a plate setter, a digital printing press or make a PDF and distribute it with the push of a button. And beyond the overhead, the cost is fairly minimal. The second reality is the automation being built into the equipment in the last 5 years. I remember the amount of physical and mental work going into setting up a fairly complex 2/color job 10 years ago compared to what we have into it now; no comparison! A good practical example would be the customer that used to order 50,000 #10 and 9 x 12 envelopes to get a good price. We would hold them and ship 10,000 at a time until they ordered more. Their money was wrapped up in inventory and we dedicated a lot of space to keep their envelopes. Now I say, just print 10,000 of them every time they need them and give them the 50,000 price.

This looks at part of the inventory equation. There’s always going to be an exception to some part of this theory, but for the most part, just say NO to excess inventory. Another reason that I mentioned above was things changing…I’ve thrown out a lot of inventory because something changed on the printed pieces (remember the Area Code change, what a boom for printers!). Talk to your printer about just-in-time ordering stratigies, its not tough and it saves everybody time and money.

Another idea we can look at later is tailoring your message to your customer. You can’t do that with big, long runs; everybody gets the same message. With shorter runs, the introduction of variable data and some marketing common sense, it’s easier than it’s ever been to take a very targeted message to a very specific customer (1 to 1 marketing). We’ll look at that closer in a future post.