Digital roadmap for commercial printing companies
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Commercial printing in the information age
Commercial printing is one of the largest and most diverse industries in the world. Despite the strong impact of broadcast television and the fast-growing online services industry, printing is still the most widely used and widely used information exchange tool. According to the US Department of Commerce's assessment: in 1997 the global print output value reached 750 billion US dollars.
In modern society, print covers every corner, and there are many kinds of printed materials, such as advertisements, brochures, books, brochures, index books, greeting cards, magazines, and so on. The scale of the printing company ranges from large companies with thousands of employees to small family businesses with only a dozen people. Most commercial printing companies serve customers in the region, while large commercial printing companies produce prints for customers in other regions or overseas.
At the beginning of this century, the printing industry was divided into prepress, printing, and postpress, but the new technology and user requirements continue to increase, making the steps between prepress and printing less, and the boundaries are blurred, reflecting this shift. The two technologies are direct stencil and digital printing. Network data connectivity and digital prepress and printing technology open up a whole new market for commercial printing, helping customers customize prints to meet their specific needs. Competition in other media has also contributed to the use of images, graphics and color printing. It is predicted that in 1994, color pages will account for 14% of total printing, and by 2003 will account for 50%.
In addition to a variety of media, the development of digital technology has had a considerable impact on the printing industry: shortening production cycles, reducing manual operations, improving product quality, increasing automated workflows, and using individual users as a market for development. These shifts have driven commercial printing companies to offer customers a full range of services with short cycle times and low prices.
Opportunities and challenges brought by new technologies
Relatively other aspects, technological change is crucial for commercial printing. In addition to having an impact on the production sector, technology updates will have a ripple effect on every aspect of business, from financial planning, human resources, to marketing strategies. . Investment in new technologies is a challenge of both failure and success, so it is important to understand which technologies meet the needs of users and the market, and to maintain competitiveness and maximize returns. The time to make an investment must also be well-accurate. Investing too early will make you tired of opening up new markets. If you invest too late, you will lose your competitiveness. If you have the right time, you can take advantage of it and you will not be disadvantaged.
Once you invest in new technologies, how to better use their functions is very important. The most important thing to do is to train all relevant departments and personnel. In any case, this training should be extended to all relevant departments because digital workflow is inevitable. Will improve the integrity and dependence between departments. In addition to the employees in the production department, internal management and logistics departments should also understand how new technologies will affect their respective work. The company's sales and marketing staff need to be aware that new technologies will bring more benefits to customers and open up new markets. Since many customers are very familiar with the development of printing technology, sales people must be able to tell customers how each technology is used.
Careful deployment in the early stages of applying new technologies will allow customers who understand the new technology and understand your company's situation to give you some homework to operate, so that operators can gradually gain experience so that they are fully skilled in mastering new technologies.
CTP and digital printing are the development trend of the printing industry. If the printing company does not have plans to develop these technologies, they will feel powerless in the future competition. Large printing companies with strong capital have begun to use digital technology, first of all, the R&D model, and then gradually expand to various operational areas. And medium-sized printing companies have to rely on two aspects to invest in new technologies: capital and technical skills. For these companies, the price of CTP is quite high, they usually consider investing in the printing machine first. In terms of technology, printers with pre-press experience will be able to master the most advanced technologies, such as CTP, FM networks and high-fidelity colors.
Small printing companies can invest in CTP systems in polyester versions (such as Agfa's SetPrint version), which use existing laser imagesetters and workflows such as Agfa's SelectPlate direct-form system. The marketing strategy for such companies is to produce short versions of monochromatic, spot color and four-color prints.
Provide satisfactory service to customers
As a customer, they want the printing company to produce prints for them with short cycle times, low prices and high quality. Due to the popularity of the desktop publishing system, many customers can complete the front-end creativity and production, but many people understand that the printing process and technology are completely different. For print companies, they should be proficient in digital prepress workflows and learn how to use standard file formats such as PDF to simplify operations.
For different print markets, printing companies must have different business ideas. We can analyze one or two markets: for example, magazines, magazines want to receive a lot of advertising. Because they use the desktop publishing system to typeset, they are required to allow the printing company to allow them to modify the layout at the last minute to accommodate the added ads. Due to the high circulation of magazines, the tight production time, the large number of journals, and the high requirements on color and printing quality, it is most suitable to use CTP digital plate making system. But they need to purchase a copy of the Copydot scanner to digitize the advertising advertisement.
It is not enough to please customers by quality and price. What the printing company needs to do is: First, establish and maintain a long-term partnership with customers. Now the all-digital workflow provides opportunities for printing companies and customers to maintain relationships. Second, understand the customer's business and needs, so that they can continue to provide them with new services. Third, learn how to promote companies and services, so that they stand out from the competition.
How to streamline your workflow and maximize your effectiveness
Digitization is a must-go goal, but everyone is on the same path. The digital workflow needs to deal with a lot of details. It is necessary to strengthen the communication between the various departments within the company and the customers in order to avoid problems that hinder production.
In the CTP and digital printing workflows, the cost of error redoing is quite high. If the problem occurs in the operation, the operator needs to be trained; if there is a problem with the customer's file, then it is necessary to strengthen the pre-press pre-check and failure. Fix features and enhance training for customers.
For jobs with a large number of images, printing companies need to use OPI servers. OPI can reduce congestion on the network and increase production. In the case of page layout, a low resolution image avatar can be used, while a high resolution image can be edited on another work platform. In the final output process, the high resolution image replaces the image alias.
Further, commercial printing companies can use Adobe's PDF and PDF-based workflows, such as Agfa's Epson workflow, to streamline prepress workflows. PDF is a file format that includes all font images, etc., independent of the operating platform, it can solve the series of pre-press pre-test problems. Once the file is "distilled" into PDF by PostScript, the raster processor can perform fast and efficient raster processing and screening of the file. The pages of each PDF file are independent, so a problem with one page does not affect other pages. Using a workflow similar to Agfa's Epson, its one-time raster processing multiple output ensures the consistency of digital proofing and print, and the Epson workflow automatically scales and traps, improving The efficiency of the printing company.
Proofing with appropriate proofing equipment reduces costs and saves time. If the production volume is large, digital proofing can be used to reduce intermediate links such as film and syrup, and the choice of digital proofing equipment will directly affect printing cost and output.
For short-run or medium-volume printing, printing companies can use a polyester version of CTP with a print capacity of 15,000, which is the most economical direct plate making method. If the prints that are often printed are very demanding and are long-run, then you should consider installing a metal version of the direct platesetter, such as Agfa's Galileo, which can output 21 sheets of 32.29 x 44.5′′ per hour ( The 2400dpi) plate ensures that multiple presses can print at the same time.
Agfa's digital roadmap series also includes a number of related technologies and market roadmaps to provide valuable information for the development of commercial printing companies.