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It's been more than two decades since production digital printing technology made its debut with the introduction of the Xerox® DocuTech printer in October 1990. To some, it was a heady upstart, while others saw digital printing as the way of the future and embraced it wholeheartedly, seeking every opportunity to match customer needs with all the benefits digital could deliver.

The prominence of digital printing today is the ongoing fulfillment of its imaging promise. The technology just keeps getting better at delivering increasing benefits of cost-effectiveness and high print quality.

Print-service providers of all sizes are finding it easier to enter the digital printing arena which, according to InfoTrends Inc.*, is the only remaining growth segment in the graphic communications market. Based on its industry surveys, InfoTrends identified six key reasons why print providers should invest in digital color printing:

Offset is declining as more work moves to digital:
A 2010 survey of more than 300 in-plant and commercial printers, 62 percent of survey respondents reported their digital print volumes grew between 2008 and 2009. During this same period, 61 percent reported declines in four-color offset work.

Black-and-white imaging is moving to color:
While digital black-and-white impressions continue to outnumber color impressions, they are not growing. InfoTrends expects digital process color to experience a compound annual growth rate of 17.8 percent between 2008 and 2013. Digital black-and-white impressions are targeted to decline 3.6 percent during the same timeframe.

Run lengths are getting shorter:
Of 240 print buyers surveyed, 50 percent said their color print jobs had run lengths of less than 1,000; and 70 percent had run lengths of less than 5,000. As digital color quality continues to improve, short-run work will increasingly migrate to digital color technology.

The push toward customized communications:
In a survey of 240 print buyers, digital technology is fueling the value proposition of deploying customized messaging to specific target markets. Marketers increasingly have to show that their marketing programs deliver ROI metrics to justify continued funding. Digital technology makes target messaging cost effective.

Web-enabled services help drive digital printing:
Print-service providers can grow their revenue sources with high-quality digital color capabilities customers can easily access via Web-to-print portals offering cross-media services. More than half of surveyed print-service providers offer Web-to-print services, while more than two-thirds of print buyers said they purchase print through the Internet.

Digital color and the Internet are linked to efficiency and profit:
There is a direct correlation between operational efficiency and improved profit margins. With digital technology, print-service providers have the opportunity to create a higher degree of value with customers by expanding their ability to bring in jobs via the Web. Leveraging digital color and the Internet together enables:

• Customers to key and proof their orders and documents online. The burden of typographical errors shifts to the end-user. This minimizes rework and reduces the resources associated with customer service and sales.
• The ability to do group orders based on type, run length, paper stock, finishing requirements and due date. This streamlines the manufacturing process and improves turnaround time.
• The easy tracking of jobs and provides customers with online status reports, thereby improving overall customer service.
• Better overall quality control because online jobs flow directly to a digital press or computer-to-plate (CTP) device, with little or no human intervention.
• Graphic communications service providers to support marketing in "protecting the brand" by storing pre-approved templates with standard layouts, fonts and colors, as well as making them accessible to remote users.
• Graphic communications providers to become an integral part of the supply chain via catalogs of printed materials (e.g., business cards, stationery, forms) and marketing templates for brochures and sell sheets. They can also become fulfillment agents for non-printed promotional items like mugs and t-shirts. The opportunity to provide additional capabilities and services creates and expands revenue streams.
• Critical functions—like collating, sorting and numbering—to be completed before the actual job is printed.
• Payment processing to be incorporated into the online workflow, which helps accelerate billing cycles and improve cash flow.

Digital color printing will continue to grow in significance. In-plant and commercial sheet printers of all sizes must stay abreast of the changing face of the print industry if they want to stay relevant by improving the services they can provide to their customers.

* InfoTrends is the leading worldwide market research and strategic consulting firm for the digital imaging and document solutions industry. It provides research, analysis, forecasts and advice to help the industry understand market trends, identify opportunities and develop strategies for business growth.

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By: Melissa Christman, Operational Excellence Leader, Appleton

Implementing Lean concepts can strengthen your print shop and help make you more competitive. However, before you can get moving, it really helps to know where you want to end up.

If your destination is improved profitability, you can get there by maximizing your operational efficiencies and controlling costs, which you do by eliminating waste. Sounds pretty simple, but where do you start?

Paging Mr. Tim Wood

Waste is both visible and invisible, and can be found throughout your print operation. There are eight sources of waste that negatively affect any print shop, whether you're an in-plant or a quick printer. The first seven common sources of waste are sometimes referred to as "Tim Wood," and they include:

1. Transportation: moving or handling information or the product/project when it doesn't add value.
2. Inventory: orders waiting to be processed, raw materials, finished goods, work-in-process, or tools that are not in use or over-purchased/over-stocked.
3. Motion: using more motion than necessary to produce the product, for example, employees needing to walk back and forth to get their tasks done.
4. Waiting: production downtime; calling for additional information and related approvals.
5. Over-production: producing more than the customer needs/wants.
6. Over-processing: using more resources than necessary to accomplish the task at hand, or including more steps than necessary.
7. Defects: the traditional form of waste-creating products that cannot be used due to errors.

The eighth form of waste is under-utilized resources, which results by not taking full advantage of human potential.

By focusing on waste reduction and elimination, a print shop can shorten its overall lead-time. This will result in increased profitably because it lowers costs and improves project throughput. Reducing cycle-times gives you the opportunity to improve your cost position. For example, if a job takes 30 seconds less time, at multiple steps throughout a project, that small amount of time multiplied by the amount of jobs you do in a day, week or month starts to add up, becoming hours. And faster cycle times can have a huge impact on customer satisfaction.

Making the invisible visible

Focusing on the visibly obvious is easy, like inventory that's been paid for but is just taking up floor space. As for the waste you can't see, it's actually right in front of you. You fail to see it because you're not thinking about "how" you do your job; you're just doing your job, whatever it is. This is why assessing all your operations is such a critical component of making your print shop Lean.

It's also critical that employees in charge of front-end operations be part of the review process. The employees' knowledge of activity flow is vital to identifying all non-value-added sources-areas for waste improvement and the related dollar savings. That's a wake-up call for you, "Tim Wood."

Business process mapping is the first step of process management. Here, you'll use tools that will enable you to document, analyze, improve, streamline and redesign the way your print shop works. You'll document and record all current operations-identifying how long each process takes, and the flow.

This examination forces you to take a critical look at not only what you do, but more importantly "how" and "why" you do it. You'll monitor and scrutinize every facet of the chain of custody-from the time an order enters the shop, until the finished product leaves. You'll create a diagram that maps the material and information flows needed, from taking the order to being paid by the customer.

The business process mapping exercise requires you to:

• Select a business process area to target
• Create an examination team
• Set project goals and plans
• Observe the process, in order to:
  1. Capture current and new process information
  2. Identify flow of transaction(s)
  3. Identify responsibility of different business functions
  4. Clearly show hand-off between functions
  5. Identify value-added and non-value-added activities
• Analyze the process findings
• Review and approve the team's recommendations
• Implement approved recommendations
• Standardize and monitor changes

Get a handle on variation with standardization

Everyone has a best practice in his or her head for doing a particular job. Establishing standardized procedures for how best to do something flattens out the variation, which shortens the delivery time.

Sixty percent of the cost for a print shop project is administrative-order handling, quoting, invoicing, etc. And when it comes to lead time, more than half of it is consumed by business-related activities that take place in the front-end of the shop, not on the shop floor.

Let's look at the order-taking process, as an example. Having standardized procedures enables the person taking the order, whether they've been in the business one year or 20, to ask the customer the questions that will ensure they get what they need. In turn, the answers to those questions will give the production people the information they need to produce the project.

As "Tim Wood" likes to point out, having the right inputs reduces waste. Through this process, the following wastes can be reduced:

• Transportation is reduced through less hand-offs. Prepress doesn't have to send the order back for clarification.
• Inventory of work-in-process is reduced because there are no production back-ups due to rework.
• Motion is reduced because no additional handling is required.
• Waiting is eliminated because all the details were captured when the order was taken.
• Over-production drops because you know the exact quantity the customer needs.
• Over-processing is eliminated because you're only doing what was specified in the order.
• Defects are eliminated since there are no errors in the job specifications because the customer confirmed the order.

As Lean concepts begin to take hold in your shop, before you really know it, the "normal" way of doing certain things will appear downright silly, and employees will begin to echo comments such as "We should have done this years ago."

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By: Steve Cassell, Operational Efficiencies Manager, Appleton

Every print shop can benefit by using Lean manufacturing concepts to manage business operations. That's especially true for in-plants, where analysis of the cost-effectiveness of doing print jobs internally versus outsourcing them to a commercial printing operation is often an ongoing process.

Lean is a waste elimination and business growth philosophy, strategy and practice. Achieving success with Lean requires a passionate pursuit of perfection by everyone in an organization. The journey toward perfection usually starts by identifying and eliminating waste (the things not valued by your customers) from your operations.

Use Lean to take control
The first step is a psychological one, because you need to acknowledge there is waste and variation in your operations and, more importantly, that you and your team want to do something about it. There is no "EASY" button to push to get started. Changing how you operate can be tough, especially when resistance comes in the form of "That's the way we've always done things."

When you decide to commit to being a Lean operation, you begin to look for ongoing opportunities to improve your print shop. This is not a diet, but a true business lifestyle and culture change, which is why it must involve everything and everyone in the shop. But before Lean principals can be applied, you first have to know exactly where things are and what is happening throughout your operation.

Documenting current processes gauges the flow of activities and enables you to identify all the sources of waste and non-value-added elements. For example: Are there redundancies in how you manage your paper inventory? Are press supplies centralized or kept in multiple locations with no index of what is stored where? Does the shop layout cause downtime and delays? What's being done to prevent injuries and accidents?

Point of Entry for Lean: The 5S Tool
For print shops new to the Lean philosophy, a good place to start is with the 5S Process. Developed by Toyota, 5S is a lean process that builds order and discipline in a work area. The five "S" references represent Japanese terms, which loosely translate as Sort, Set in Order, Shine, Standardize, and Sustain, which require you to:

• Sort: Keep only what you need.
• Set in order: Put everything you need in a specific place. It should be close to where you're using it. For example, tools. Keeping what you need in the most-appropriate spot eliminates motion waste.
• Shine: Clean the entire area. Make it as new as possible. This includes equipment. A clean press will show component failures, like a leaking motor bearing, easier than a dirty one.
• Standardize: Standardize everything in the area. Make sure everything is visual and that it is kept that way. Use visual cues to help achieve more consistent operational results. Someone from the outside should be able to walk through the shop and see if something is out of place. Standardization helps eliminate waste.
• Sustain: Keep it this way by making it part of the daily routine. Done consistently, it will become the way you do business.

Audits help create lasting value
While you can make significant and rapid improvements applying the first three of the 5S references, it is through the last two, Standardize and Sustain, that organizations gain lasting value and competitive advantage from the 5S process. That often requires a culture change through which employees see 5S as a continuous process. The best way to judge continued engagement in the process is through regular audits. Such audits can be conducted monthly, quarterly and annually, depending on the size and scope of the operation, and should involve employees at all levels of the operations.

Consider a pilot approach
The 5S Process is not "housekeeping," but a system of practiced organization and discipline that is designed to help achieve more consistent operational results. A great feature of 5S is that it can be implemented on a pilot basis, such as on a single press or in a support area, like finishing.

This stepped approach creates a foundation for implementing Lean production practices shop-wide.

Documenting current processes gauges the flow of work activities and enables you to identify all the sources of waste and non-value-added elements. This photo is a good example of how keeping supplies centralized can help reduce wasted movement. Here, paper supplies are in the immediate work area. This helps maximize production by reducing delays caused by going to get more paper.

Whether you apply them to a dedicated work area or shop-wide, the fundamentals of Lean—evaluate, implement, measure and improve—are all within your control. Lean is not an end, in itself, but the operational journey that continuously creates value, cuts waste and reduces costs.

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By: Andi Peeters, Appleton Marketing Manager

A recent Appleton survey of nearly 300 in-plant print shops revealed the sources those printers use for industry information, and to what extent they rely on social media connections. In addition, the role of digital printing is rapidly changing the responsiveness and efficiency of many operations.

Preferred sources of information
Nearly 90% of respondents use Internet websites to increase their industry knowledge and to assist them with purchasing decisions. Yet these printers continue to rely on print, as 87% of survey respondents said trade magazines are an important source of information.

Email (85% always or sometimes use), e-newsletters (79%), direct mail (75%), and trade shows (72%) serve as other key sources of information. Forums, webinars, and blogs provide additional options, although respondents reported never using those three resources 51%, 56%, and 71% respectively.

Few social media connections
Social media sites do not yet have much appeal for in-plant survey respondents. Over 80% never use social media sites, specifically LinkedIn (81%), Facebook (84%), or Twitter (93%), to seek information about the industry or to assist in purchasing decisions.

Hot topics
Digital printing drew the most interest from survey respondents, as nearly 70% indicated they want to learn more about it for business and professional growth. More than half of respondents (56%) are looking for information about in-plant industry trends. Increasing operational efficiencies (44%), paper buying tips (43%), and green initiatives (40%) also scored well. Social media marketing was the least appealing topic, with only 11% of respondents indicating an interest.

Matching technology with customer needs
Over 150 in-plant printers responded to Appleton's separate survey about their shops' digital equipment. Of those respondents, 95% have digital equipment. In total, nearly 80% of the shops have either one (10%), two (30%), three (26%), or four (13%) digital equipment units, with two and three being most typical. The other 20% of respondents have anywhere from five to twelve units. The most common equipment brands are Xerox (28%), Canon (18%), Konica Minolta (17%), and Ricoh (12%). Sixty percent of the digital equipment is owned versus leased.

Moving to digital
According to recent data from the March 2011 edition of In-Plant Graphics magazine, industry-wide, 25% of in-plants no longer provide offset printing. When making an equipment upgrade decision, the majority of in-plants are discarding their oldest presses in favor of toner-based digital presses.

Cost-effective and reliable
"Offset printing may always have its place, but I see digital as the solution for the future," said Tom Walker, in-plant print shop supervisor for Alliance Laundry Systems, LLC, Ripon, Wis. "Offset printing is still ideal for long-run, high-quantity jobs, whereas a digital format is best for shorter runs. Digital printing is a cost-effective and reliable technology. And it simplifies the supply chain for fast turnaround."

"More and more customers are requesting smaller print quantities," said Joe Carrelas, manager, printing department for the University Health Network—Toronto General Hospital, Ontario, Canada. "Requests that require offset are slowly diminishing."

Another reason for the trend to digital printing is the capability to do variable data printing. "Variable data printing saves time and cost by reducing the need to print for inventory and improving production turnaround time," Carrelas said. "The combination of digital printing and variable data technology allows us to provide solutions to other departments," Carrelas added. "For example, the hospital's human resources department frequently uses variable data technology for issuing benefits statements to more than 10,000 employees."

"Approximately 10% of our in-plant printing requests incorporate variable data technology," Walker said. "However, I see the need for variable data, specifically for personalized financial and marketing materials, to grow in the near future."