SAN DIEGO, CA: The Foundation of Flexographic Technical Association’s Digital Prepress Conference, staged here, Nov. 17-18, 2004, incorporated statistical data, trend analysis, real-life print production experiences and future forecasts into a fast moving, free flowing format that encouraged open communications and informative dialogue. It involved 125 delegates, 30 speakers, and five panel discussions.
At the core of the messages delivered throughout the one-and-one-half day technical sessions and three-hour tabletop exhibition were five points:
- Flexographic printing and converting is a complex and growing global industry.
- Customer connectivity is essential.
- Automation is driving diversification.
- Digital Asset Management tools represent critical technologies in the automated workflow world that today speeds high quality printed packages to market.
- Lowest possible cost can be achieved through peak efficiencies that maximize productivity and improve bottom-line profits.
Agger told the audience, “Flexo has great appeal. It’s the process to beat for quality, cost and short-run flexibility.” He added, “Be vigilant. Keep innovating.” The study clearly concludes that, “Productivity is number one. SKUs are on the rise. Pressure for just-in-time manufacturing is paramount. Converters are sensitive to package buyers’ demands and desires.”
Ted Namur, Artwork Systems, told the audience, “Speed to market is essential to meeting the competition head on.” He pointed to the powerful impact now exerted on printers/converters and prepress trade shops by retailers, naming both Wal-Mart and Target, then joked, “CPCs want it right, yesterday and free!”
Moving into tomorrow’s workflow, Namur urged listeners to leverage digital asset management as a value-added service, and said, “He who controls the information, owns the client.”
Roundtable Round-up
Panelists and pundits followed Namur to the stage, with DuPont Imaging Technologies’ Mark Mazur moderating a discussion on proofing devices and how their speed, accuracy and output can win package buyer approval of concept and design early on in the development process. He directed eight hard-hitting questions to the six people constituting the roundtable: Frances Cicogna, Agfa; Patrick Floody, Creo; Daniel Bowen, DuPont; Hans Mickelson, Tekgraf Corp.; Todd Bigger, Kodak Polychrome Graphics; and Richard Deroo, Latran Technologies.
Conference Co-Chair Rick Mix, FTA, led a six-member panel discussion of existing screening options available to flexographers and opened the proceedings by admitting, “No cure-all will solve every problem and meet all expressed needs.” Seated at the table were Mark Samworth, Artwork Systems; Cicogna; Steve Miller, Creo; Mark Vanover, Esko-Graphics; and Chris Van Duker, RIPit Corp.
Miller delivered a brief overview. “If you have a need to differentiate your service offering, tap into the technologies and become more efficient. Be more cost effective. Make measurable, visible improvements in the finished product. Service differentiation, process improvement and revenue generation should be driving every printer or prepress technician’s desire to evaluate needs and enhance performance.” “Flexo in the round—is it a myth or is it reality? Can a product be produced that can actually be all things to all people?”—Those were the questions that Tom Underwood, OEC Graphics put to a three-member panel. Those grilled: John Hite, The Bryce Company; John DuPont, Paper Converting Machine Company and Ray Bodwell, DuPont.
Hite, a wide-web flexible packaging printer, has been emphasizing sleeve workflow development for seven years. He admitted that complexity in designs has led to the size of the prepress department increasing, yet he indicated that ITR systems on the market today are capable, consistent and user friendly. His top-most desire was simply expressed, “We must start to decrease prepress and prepress media costs very soon in order to effectively move toward introduction of a full-blown ITR workflow.”
Dr. Penny Osmond, California Polytechnic University, moderated a panel highlighting a package buyer’s and a trade shop’s experiences with expanding the color gamut through introduction of Opaltone™ and Hexachrome™. Speaking from the buyer’s perspective was Gary Vogt, Kraft Foods; from the prepress technician’s, Dan Reid, Renaissance Photographic Imaging.
“Kraft is interested in expanding the color gamut because the eye sees 10 million colors. Monitors now capture 70 percent, but CMYK process printing produces only 20 percent,” Vogt began. “We’re looking to enhanced color to deliver better shelf impact, to grab consumers’ eyes and make them pick up the package right away.” He reported that Kraft is attracted to flexo, based on the cost-cutting, short-run and promotional opportunities that it brings to the company and its extensive product line.”
Reid insisted, “We must have exceptional process control at the press.” His own experience, with Hexachrome™ proved that today’s flexo printer can hold .004 to .006 dot registration through careful and effective utilization of press optimization and configuration tools—ICC profiles, characterization charts and the combination of multiple software applications into common prepress files.
Invent, Don’t Predict
“Flexo follows business and technical trends, issues and challenges of commercial print by two to four years,” noted Steve Bonoff, International Prepress Association president and clean-up speaker at FFTA’s 2004 Digital Prepress Conference. “Repositioning and re-engineering to become a one-stop graphics provider is today’s major market driver. The industry continues to concentrate on maintaining the perception of customer value—from concept to output.” IPA recently studied converter behavior, its impact on prepress providers and the changes needed as a result, Bonoff told listeners. He then presented a seven-point checklist for the future: 1. Get very close to customers; 2. Implement new sales leadership strategies; 3. Understand your customers’ drivers and their customers’ drivers; 4. Challenge your organization to rapidly adapt to change; 5. Proactively seek new employee skill sets; 6. Define value—become a marketing organization, not just a production group; 7. Invest in automation. Use the latest technology to lead your customers, not to burden your operations.
Bonoff’s final words of advice, indicative of the resounding message delivered throughout FFTA’s Digital Prepress Conference: “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”
