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.

The phrase “Print on Demand” can be a little intimidating (maybe demanding) to printers. Think about it, Print on Demand means people are demanding printing right now! Well, like it or not, thats what the way printing is today. And when you look a little closer it’s more than just producing quick printing, it’s a lot of things that have to happen just right to get a print job transferred, produced, delivered, and everything be right.

“Print on Demand” can be applied to various applications, from inventory reduction and remote ordering to just uploading files and getting them produced and finished very quickly. We’ll start by looking at the latter and move into other applications in future posts.

The nature of printing today is going through a big shift. Shorter print runs, higher print quality, quicker turnaround times and the introduction of variable data coupled with the ability to move electronic files over the internet, provide remote proofing and the need to get specific messages in front of specific people is reshaping the print world faster than most shops can keep up with. At Oregon, we’ve been pretty lucky for a few reasons. We’ve been doing small jobs (and small jobs usually need to be done quickly) for a long time, so we’re pretty good to it. We’ve also been lucky to have some great customers who have stuck with us and allowed us to keep moving (investing) into the Print on Demand arena.

So what have we been doing to strengthen our “Print on Demand” position? Well first, I think its got to be easy to get your files to the printer. An FTP (File Transfer Protocol) site has to be easy to use. No downloading software onto your computer, hard to use interfaces and passwords, or anything esle thats a hassle, you need to be able to pick out the file on your computer and upload it, that easy.

Now that you have the files to your printer, you need to be able to communicate with them what you want (and they need to understand). Part of the “Print on Demand” model means your print files will print on our system. We are all lucky that we live in the world of PDF’s today, so that in most cases if the customer can make a high quality PDF, we’ll make it print. That also means we need to be available to talk you through problems getting there. Fortunately though, through email, voice mail and cell phones we seem to always be able to get the help people need.

Now comes the fun part, getting it printed. I wish I could say that there was one workflow that could handle everything, but every small job has its own personality and needs.One of the first questions is are we going to print digitally or on an offset press. Each has its merits, but the bottom line is we have to have the right equipment in place and ready to run. We’ve worked hard and invested a lot of money in what’s turned out to be a great mix for the work we do. 2 and 5 color presses, Cannon and Xerox digital, and I still am just amazed with what we put out every day. We love to give tours and show people our shop, plus it helps puts us and our customers be on the same page when it comes to how we are going to get stuff done. The bottom line is that we’ll get it printed quickly.

The final part of the equation is getting the final job where it needs to be. For years we depended on UPS, FedX and couriers alone, but late last year we purchased a delivery van. It had just gotten to be such a big job, and its really nice now with our own driver (Jim), as he gets to know our customers and their preferences. Another part of getting the delivery part right is to get the shipping information as early in the process as possible and getting it into the system. That allows Shannon (our logistics guy) to really plan out what’s being delivered and get it done as efficiently as possible. We still use couriers and UPS a lot, but I think that the whole logistics part of “Print on Demand” is more important than it’s ever been before;  because if you can’t get it where it’s supposed to be, its not “On Demand”.

So that’s where we’re at with “On Demand” printing. The more we talk to our customers, the more we learn what they need to accomplish in these new times, and the more ideas it gives us to keep doing it better. In one of the next posts, we’ll look at how Print on Demand has helped our reduce the amount of inventoryreduce the amount of inventory they need to carry.

We are having great results  on our Heidelberg PM 5-52 (simple for extremely automated 5/Color printing press), with different varnishes, coatings and spot colors.  Printing varnishes inline will add gloss to photos, or a header you want to pop.  Flooding a sheet will add rub resistance and help with bleeds in the cutting stage.  Another cool application is our “Kentucky Shine”,  It appears like a thick varnish but dries faster and harder.   Coated cover is best, because on a lighter sheet it wants to curl the sheet too much.  Both processes are run inline.

Speaking of cool applications, we have a die cutting system that attaches to the fifth unit.  This enables us to perforate, score, and die cut inline, still utilizing the 1st four units for printing. You can talk to Mike or Judd to see if this application works for your project.

With the 5-color we can run a spot color with 4-color process which makes matching a PMS color easy while keeping cost close to a process run.

The specs are 14.5″ x 20.47″ sheet size and image area is 14 x 20.375.  We use 8 mil polyester plates from our Mitsubishi DPX 2 computer-to-plate system, great plate!

The automation helps us in many ways as well, the auto wash makes going to spot colors a quick change.  We will run 1, 2 & 3 color jobs on her, especially if it’s a long run.  She will do 13,000 impressions per hour all day long.

We are very proud of our 5/C Heidelberg PM 52, and love to show it off.  We welcome visitors, and Judd is a great tour guide.