A report from Canon concludes that 58% of digital print providers increased their profit/revenue in 2009, as opposed to just over 31% of non-digital providers. The study, based on a survey of 840 printers across the world was conducted by ProPrint columnist Frank Romano. It also conlcudes that 26% of printers who did well during the downturn had invested in both digital and offset lithographic.
A report by PODI found that digital volumes increased slightly in the Australian market last year, largely driven by a 55% boost in color volumes. The PODI study found that Australian production digital printers produced 13.8 billion A4-equivalent prints in 2009, a marginal increase of 1% from 13.6 billion in 2008. Monochrome volumes declined 9% to 10.4 billion pages in 2009, but the total result was propped up by a 55% increase in color volumes to 3.4 billion pages.
As a result of this trend, the proportion of color pages increased from 16% to 25% of all digital pages. Because of the higher value of color prints, the report estimates that the revenue from production digital printing increased 20%. The PODI study was based on data from digital vendors such as Canon, Fuji Xerox, HP, Konica Minolta, Océ and Ricoh.
To paraphrase NBC’s Today Show’s weatherman Al Roker, “that’s what’s happening around the world. What’s going on in your neck of the woods?”
Howard Fenton is a Senior Consultant at NAPL. Howie advises commercial printers, in-plants, and manufacturers on workflow management, operations, digital services, and customer research.
For those involved in data-driven printing, other people’s direct mail horror stories can be a great resource for refining your own workflow to make sure the same mistakes don’t happen to you.
Here are three of the latest disaster stories from members of LinkedIn’s Direct Marketing Association (Official) discussion group. You might want to put down your coffee before reading so you don’t burst out into laughter and spit it at the screen.
When I was just starting my DM career, the blank spots for personalization were inside parentheses and usually had copy that said (insert name) as a reference for production purposes. You guessed it! When the material was printed, all the personalization spots were printed exactly as the original boards, i.e. with a salutation that said: “Dear (insert name).” It was just a test, but nonetheless, we printed 50,000 pieces that had to be trashed.
One of my insurance client’s mailings to home/auto policyholders for renewals also included “Dear Deceased.”
We lasered 11,000 (of a 150,000 run) before someone noticed the bottom line of the address read “City, State, ZIP.”
These are a funny read, but I’m sure it wasn’t funny when these things actually happened. The good news for us is that we can learn from someone else’s disaster.
Has your client checked its name field and cleansed it for “deceased”? What proofing processes do you have in place to ensure that variable field markers are not printed as text? It seems impossible until it actually happens to you.
So how about you? Got any of your own disaster stories to share?
Rice University Press is being shut down next month, ending an experiment in an all-digital model of scholarly publishing. University officials said that they needed to make a tough economic decision to end the operation, and they acted against the recommendations of an outside review team that had urged Rice to continue. The move ends a high-profile experiment in digital university-press publishing. Closed once before, in 1996, the press was reborn in 2006 as an all-digital operation. But it had proven too expensive to sustain even in its new form, according to a statement by Eugene Levy, a Rice professor of astrophysics who stepped down as the university’s provost in June.
“The hope was that, without the burden of having to maintain a print inventory, the press might sustain itself largely on revenues from print-on-demand book sales,” Levy said. “Unfortunately, book sales remained very slow, and projections discouraged the anticipation that revenues would, in the foreseeable future, grow to a level that could materially cover even minimal costs of operations. Combined with pressures on the university budget from the broad fiscal crisis of recent years, the university concluded that it could not continue indefinite subsidy of the RUP experiment, as painful budget reductions were being absorbed across the entire university, including in the core of Rice’s educational and research mission.”
Supporters of academic publishing had high hopes for the Rice project, which was launched in 2006 with the goal of merging scholarly peer review with the convenience and low cost of digital publishing. Some supporters are in discussions about raising private support to continue the press as a scholarly publishing outfit that might not be attached to any single university. In other words, a University Press in a certain region to support multiple universities.
The demise of the project led to speculation about whether the Rice experience suggested difficulties for the digital printing business model. Especially after rumors spread that the University of Scranton Press was being shut down and the suspension of Southern Methodist University in May. While the Scranton and SMU presses are larger than Rice’s, they are both relatively small. And these are not new. Threats of the closure of university presses are ongoing. For example, the operations of both Louisiana State University and Utah State University were at risk in 2009, but survived – closures have been rare.
Levy said that the press was costing $150,000 to $200,000 a year. Admittedly, I have not done any work for any of these universities, but my experiences with university In-plants and other in-plant printing facilities is the same – it’s all about matching print demand to the investment in equipment. The reasons are obvious. There are different categories of digital printing devices and finishing equipment that range from slower, less expensive equipment to faster, more expensive equipment.
It’s not unusual for in-plant printers considering an equipment purchase to jump right into the deep end and buy the faster, more expensive equipment and build the infrastructure to support it. I often see in-plants make investments in 90 ppm black and white devices, 30 ppm color devices, automated finishing equipment and MIS systems with estimating, job ticketing, and billing modules. This level of investment is very productive but assumes a fairly high demand and if the demand does not exist or is not developed quickly then you are losing money.
Often critics oversimplify this issue and say that it does not make sense for Universities to have their own press, or companies to have their own in-plant printer. But the real questions are how important is convenience and low cost self publishing, what is the demand and could you cost justify the demand.
What do you think? Are you a fan of University in-plants or University Presses?
Howard Fenton is a Senior Consultant at NAPL. Howie advises commercial printers, in-plants, and manufacturers on workflow management, operations, digital services, and customer research.
. . . Or maybe I should be saying Marketers Take Your Mark. Either way, I’m seeing example after example of why printed communications need to become increasingly nimble to stay relevant in the marketing mix. I was inspired by a recent post from Pat Allen of Rock the Boat Marketing (and by the Old Spice Guy video embedded in the post)
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According to Pat, “the tilt toward real-time communicating exposes what we believe to be the greatest weakness in investment product communicating: Reacting after the fact and on a delay.” While she is looking at the asset management industry through a marketing lens – you could easily point that same lens at print service providers and in-house shops. “The Old Spice guy work is an excellent demonstration of an emerging communications competency: the preparing to improvise, the organizing to be able to react in the moment to external stimulus,” says Pat.
Old Spice Guy says “Now I’m on a boat. Look in your hand. Look back at me. Now I’m on a ship. Look at your man. Look back at me. I’m on a horse.” Can your communications shift that quickly – and look that good doing it? (Phew!)
There have been several posts recently about combining print and other digital marketing channels. Most frequently referenced is putting PURLs on direct mail. You know what? That’s already old hat. PURLs provide an additional channel for the recipient, which is good, but it is not necessarily preparing the marketer to be able to react quickly to external stimulus from social media sites, breaking news or other market activity.
We need to enable our print campaigns to launch on a dime in support of trends gleaned from online activity. Of course, we will want to communicate with people who are already online through online means – but why not extend the learning to be able to launch the same great message to the customers we know don’t use our online channels? Or simply reinforce the online message with a tangible printed campaign?
Allen cites a social media presentation by Matthew Guiste, category manager for social media at Starbucks and successful revenue-generating programs that involved a rapid exchange of information, internally and externally. Starbucks identified mini-trends from activity on Facebook and Twitter and worked quickly to syndicate that content across multiple other social media outlets. They could also have launched a direct mail campaign – but sadly – with the response times of most organizations today – not fast enough to ride the wave of the current trend.
For direct mail (and transactional communications) to gain a broader piece of the “social media response” pie it will need to be faster and more collaborative with what is now a social media silo. If the collaboration and rapid publishing tools can be put in place – with workflows that link social media monitoring, analytics, content management, approval and production approvals – social media can be a great friend to digital printing rather than a competitor.
So, look at your social media channels. Look back at me. Look at your direct mail. Look back at me. Anything is possible. I’m on a plane (Seriously, I am.)
I love the member polls from Print Buyer Online. It’s always fun to go in there, poke around the archives, and see what print buyers think about different issues and compare them to how printers think about them. You can learn a lot that way.
PBO’s most recent closed poll (7/13/2010) is on the issue of monochrome digital printing. How is it being used? The results are interesting. Here’s what poll respondents said:
a) Black-and-white is dead. We’ll never go back now that we print in color (12%)
b) We’ve stayed with monochrome but have added a transpromotional touch to our statements with personal and relevant messaging that helps to cross-sell our products and services (18%)
c) We integrate monochromatic design themes occasionally to reduce printing costs (24%)
d) We use monochrome print and divert print cost savings to fund online elements that support campaigns such as email, mobile messaging and personalized URLs (6%)
e) Our print jobs are a mix of color and monochrome and our printer utilizes “job splitting” (printing color pages on color printers and B/W pages on B/W printers) to help keep costs down (41%)
The number that jumped out at me is the 18% of poll respondents who say they are integrating variable messaging into their black-and-white documents. When we think of selling 1:1 printing, we normally think about the need to go around print buyers, whose job is to hold the line on price. But this poll suggests that print buyers are increasingly tasked with understanding value and marketing content than they used to be.
Also standing out is the 12% who said that they’d permanently switched from black-and-white to color. Again, we normally think of print buyers as holding the line on price. Although the cost-efficiencies of color have come down greatly, black-and-white still costs less. Again, the print buyers in this poll are showing preference for value over price.
This isn’t yesterday’s print buyer. Got any stories to tell?
If you have been following the PrintCEO blogs you know that there is a lot of interest in e-books. E-books are becoming more popular by the minute thanks to devices like the Kindle, Nook, and iPad, but major publishers have been hesitant to go all in—until now.
Mass market romance publisher Dorchester Publishing has dropped its traditional offset printing business in favor of an e-book/print-on-demand model effective with its September titles that are “shipping” now. President John Prebich said after retail sales fell by 25% in 2009, the company knew that 2010 “would be a defining year,” but rather than show improvement, “sales have been worse.”
While returns are down, the company has had a difficult time getting its titles into stores as shelf space for mass market has been reduced, Prebich explained. Dorchester recently let its field sales force of seven go. The editorial team remains intact, although Prebich said the number of titles released monthly will likely be reduced from over 30 to 25. He said the schedule for 2011 is set and Dorchester has books in the pipeline through June 2012.
Dorchester will continue to do print copies for its book club business and has signed a deal with Ingram Publisher Service for IPS to do print-on-demand copies for selected titles. According to Prebich, some e-books that are doing well in the digital marketplace will be released as trade paperbacks with IPS fulfilling orders; the company, however, will not do any more mass market paperbacks for retail distribution.
Prebich said Dorchester’s e-book business has had “remarkable growth,” which he expects to double again in the next year. Still, digital sales accounted for only 12% of total revenue prior to the company making the transition to the e-book/POD model. Prebich conceded that Dorchester will have lower revenues, but he expects margins to improve.
He said the company is working out a new royalty rate with authors. Editors are talking to authors now about the changes. “We hope they’ll stay,” Prebich said. Dorchester’s e-books are available at most major vendors and are compatible with most platforms at an average price of $6.99. Trade paperbacks will be priced in the $12 to $15 range.
We have been seeing a shift from offset books to on-demand books for years. Do you think this is the first of many publishers that will accelerate the shift from offset books to both on-demand and e-books?
Howard Fenton is a Senior Consultant at NAPL. Howie advises commercial printers, in-plants, and manufacturers on workflow management, operations, digital services, and customer research.
In today’s competitive environment, most of us are faced with three major factors impacting our profits: more capacity than work, aggressive pricing to get the sale, and our client asking for additional features or benefits after the project is booked.
In the typical scenario, sales works hard to bring in opportunities, and estimating cuts the price to a minimum profit margin to try to secure the work, and if you’re lucky you close the deal.
But then the fun really begins as you start to work on the project and realize there is more to it than you thought. Maybe a lot more.
It may start very simply and innocently – changing a few words in the copy, a couple of line-break changes for better layout, and the next thing you know you’ve happily agreed to move the mail date up by three days. Whatever the request, the result is the same – you do the extra work, (incur cost), to keep the client happy, (loyal?), and it eats into your narrow profit margins even further. If you do not have a detailed activity-based cost system, the total impact of small, incremental changes, or even larger ones, could go unnoticed. At the end you look at the financials and wonder where the profit has gone.
One way to change the trend is to implement a Statement of Work, (SOW), for every project – even small ones. Make sure the statement of work reflects all aspects of the project: data, composition, print, finishing, distribution and reporting. You will get push back that this is too much work and slows down the sales process, but in fact we have seen over and over that making the effort up front can significantly reduce delays in the contracting and production of the project, and the clarity it provides saves time, (cost), for both you and your client.
The statement of work would be provided to or reviewed with the client to confirm that you and they are in agreement as to the scope of the work. Ideally, the client and you sign off on the SOW when the pricing is finalized and the purchase order is provided. Track the actual work performed against the SOW and make sure the changes are documented so they can be considered in repeat or similar future work. Communicating to the client the changes and additional work being performed can minimally be used as a way of creating good will and improving the relationship, but can also be an objective way of identifying and communicating additional costs. You decide in advance of discussion whether these are costs you wish to pursue with your client. Most importantly, you know that the work and costs exist.
This may seem simple and obvious but we have found time and time again that even if there is a Statement of Work process in place, it is used inconsistently or steps are left out. Most often, the closing review of a project is left undone, as we have moved on to focus on the next project. So the next time you wonder where profits have gone, take a look at your SOW process.
As if you need more banter about FSC, SFI and PEFC, here comes yet another slew of mindless babble about paper certification. First however, I must digress.
I always tell my clients to look at the forests in which they live and find a grove over 100 years old. Although this is a generalization, for the most part, we screwed things up with our early logging practices when the supply was “limitless”. That said, this is now our collective legacy and our responsibility. No offence, but many of you have no concept of what our forests looked like before we got here. What’s occurring now in under-developed nations world-wide happened here a hundred or more years ago. Ok, now back to the drivel at hand.
What most people don’t realize is that there are two types of “certified” virgin fibers that can go into our paper. First is from managed (read third-party audited) forests. Second is what we’ll generically call verified responsible procurement, where the forests themselves are not audited, but the wood is confirmed to have been legally sourced, and basic environmental, social and local economic criterion are met.
Now listen very carefully; both go through a certification process of one type or another. Both are considered “certified” and both can be included in a Chain of Custody (CoC) certified product, because both can be traced back to their origin. Got it? Good!
Although there are philosophical differences between FSC, SFI and PEFC as to what constitutes good forest management, the purpose of this writing is not to discuss the merits of one certification system over the other, but simply to state that any management system is better than no management at all.
Let’s be brutally honest. If you are currently certified to anything, chances are it’s because you were told you had to be. Your clientele’s marketing and public relations folks are in the business of positive image and profitability (or at least accountability). Credibility and transparency are key components of that. Oddly enough they are also the main tenants of responsible sourcing and of CoC.
Look at a CoC label like you do the UL or CE label on your electronics. It’s a guarantee, a promise. To your customers it means that you voluntarily have someone looking over your shoulder as a partner to give them the assurance that, odd as it may sound; certified paper is actually verified to have been used in their certified product.
Did you know there are many papers out there that are available as either CoC certified or not depending on whether credits (based on equivalent Forest Management (FM) certified purchase volumes) have been applied? And that the non-FM certified portion still comes from certified procurement sources? Is it a perfect process? No, but until enough land is third-party audited to any kind of FM standard, it’s the best we have. Bottom line is that (and listen carefully) none of the fiber that goes into any CoC certified product comes from unknown or illegal sources.
Ok, back to the banter. So once again, there is FM-certified wood and there is responsibly procured wood. FSC’s responsible sourcing program is called FSC Controlled Wood (FSC CW). SFI’s version is called SFI Fiber Sourcing. The difference between the two is philosophical at best, although I know others would argue that.
Among other things, the FSC has made the decision not to sell FSC CW as a labeled product to end-users, but only as a component as an FSC Mixed CoC product. Although there is no such thing as a Controlled Wood label, when you buy brand of paper that is available as FSC certified upon request, but what you’re purchasing isn’t, the fiber is actually equivalent to the volume of FSC CW. The SFI on the other hand allows for the sale of Fiber Sourcing-labeled products to end-users, but this is not CoC certified (I’m sure that’s clear as mud).
One thing must be understood. If clients request CoC certified rather than simply certified paper, then SFI Fiber Sourcing products are not an option. Only SFI CoC, PEFC CoC or FSC CoC are. Case-in-point; Sears Holdings instituted just such a paper purchasing policy in November 2009. Many other private-sector, government and institutional organizations have also implemented similar policies. Just Google “paper purchasing policy” and see what pops up. Some say “certified” others say “CoC certified”.
So with all of this confusion what is the definition of “certified”? The (triple) bottom line is that even SFI Fiber Sourcing/FSC Controlled Wood certification goes through an in-depth risk analysis which includes among other things the reputations of the providers, the level of corruption in the region, as well as other aggravating factors.
High risk situations trigger third-party audits even under certified sourcing programs. As an example, based on historical environmental and human rights violations, this past April (the month), APRIL (Asia Paper Resources International Limited) had their FSC Controlled Wood certification suspended. Remember, this was not a CoC certification that was revoked, but simply a responsible procurement certification. What does that tell you about the bigger issues out there?
And finally as many of you know, pending expected legislation is the elephant in the room; the 110 year-old Lacey Act. Under the Lacey paper and print amendment it will be “unlawful to import, export, transport, sell receive, acquire or purchase in interstate or foreign commerce any plant taken or traded in violation of the laws of a US State or most foreign laws”. The reality is that Lacey as it pertains to paper and printing goes back under consideration on September 1, 2010.
Although not yet, eventually, it will become law, and when it does, any paper product is subject to at the very least confiscation upon even the accusation that the paper was illegally sourced. The scary part is that even if your supplier’s supplier is charged, you and your customers technically become confiscation-liable. And although CoC certified paper and to a slightly lesser degree, certified responsibly procured paper is not the end-all, it goes a long way in establishing “due care”. So in effect, oddly enough right now it is not illegal to purchase paper sourced illegally, but it soon will be.
If your customers are satisfied with your word, and they don’t require a licensed CoC (or Fiber Sourcing) brand to be printed on their material, then fine. But if they do require their suppliers to be certified everybody’s on a level playing field anyway. If you don’t believe me, go buy your next computer without a UL or CE label.
Last week we started a conversation about how temperature and humidity affect digital printing. This week we will delve a little deeper. The effect of moisture on paper is nothing new. What is new are the newer printing technologies and the effect of moisture content on the paper transport, toner adherence and color quality due to the absorption of inkjet inks and inkjet papers.
The first thing to know is that paper is hygroscopic, which means it picks up moisture from its environment and it will release moisture into the environment to try to reach equilibrium with the moisture in the air. Over the years, I have been in shops filled with high-speed laser type printers to address complaints about paper jamming. Believe it or not, jamming issues are often the result of moisture content and improper paper handling, which affect static electricity and curl. Paper curl can be caused by several factors but one of them is due to the wavy edges and tight edges of paper that is open to the humidity in the air.
As paper fibers lose moisture, they shrink in diameter – when they pick up moisture, they swell. The problem with open reams of paper in humid areas is that only the edges that are exposed to the moist air will swell (or shrink in lower humidity areas) or only about the outer .5” will be affected, while the inner part of the paper stays the same size. As the outer edges swell (or shrink), the paper starts to distort in shape, creating wavy or tight edges – most consumers just call it curl. When sheets of wavy paper are fed through a copier, printer or digital press, jamming can occur.
Static electricity is an electrical charge that builds up on anything moving including paper. Typically, in normal humidity, the charge is easily released (discharged) and does not have an opportunity to build up enough to cause issues; however, in low humidity conditions, the dry air acts as an insulator and the charges build-up causing the paper to stick together.
Want to avoid production issues? Focus on these six basic paper handling tips:
Store the paper in a room that is temperature and humidity controlled. If that is not possible, then leave the paper in the room that it will be printed in for 24 hours.
Keep the paper shrink wrapped and away from outside walls.
Before you remove the wrap, make sure that the paper is the same temperature as the surrounding air.
Keep your production space between 45 – 55% RH, temperatures constant and near comfortable conditions.
Watch outside doors for moisture changes, especially from loading docks, and consider installing a second barrier such as plastic or forced air between the docks and production areas.
Acclimate the paper after printing to allow moisture return (offset, laser) or “outgas” (inkjet).
Have you discovered any other tricks to help avoid production problems due to paper moisture or humidity?
Howard Fenton is a Senior Consultant at NAPL. Howie advises commercial printers, in-plants, and manufacturers on workflow management, operations, digital services, and customer research.
When we hear about digital media consumer studies, we’re always focused on the growth in digital media and it’s impact on revenue and print. But to me, the more interesting story is usually buried under the headlines.
That was the case with IBM’s third annual Digital Media Consumer Study. The study is part of a research series that has surveyed nearly 10,000 consumers over the past three years. Like all consumer studies, it reveals that digital media use has grown at a staggering pace.
Between 2007 and 2009, mobile music and video adoption increased fivefold.
Online newspaper penetration more than tripled.
53% of surveyed users are regular users of social networking sites.
40% regularly read online newspaper.
To me, however, here’s the part that’s really interesting. This year’s research shows that growth in more established digital media services such as social networking and online newspapers sites is now being driven primarily by consumers older than age 45. That got my attention.
We think of older consumers as focused on print. We take older consumers for granted. Sure, tweens, teens, twenty- and thirty-somethings are focused on digital media, but — we tell ourselves — at least the more established pocketbooks and purchasing power still love print. At least they haven’t been lured by the siren of digital media.
Now they have.
So while IBM’s report talks about how the shift to lower-revenue digital media is creating a revenue shortfall, I’m stuck on the fact that we’re losing the 45+ age consumer to Facebook and Kindle. I actually had a conversation recently in which the last words I heard from this world-class, internationally known designer (over the age of 50) were, “Facebook me.”
In this industry, we talk a lot about multi-channel marketing. In reality, this is usually limited to direct mail to personalized URLs or a combination of email and print. “Multi-channel marketing” hasn’t yet really extended to online communities and other digital media.
If print is going to survive, it needs to. That means integrating print into the digital world in which consumers — including the 45+ consumers we’ve historically taken for granted — live. If you don’t know how to do that, you might want to bring someone on staff who does.
The Vectis Agency in Australia has a great track record of helping their customers, who are typically printers, mail houses and postal organizations, to sell the concept of Transpromo, or Integrated Insight Marketing to their end customers using case studies.
According to Grant Stewart, the Founder of Vectis, “we have pursued case studies that prove a marketing point, for example: can the statement deliver value long after the other channels have stopped working ?” They showed the answer to be “yes” in their Bartercard case study. “Or can the statement deliver better value than competing channels?” Again, the answer was “yes” according to a case study for Lombard. “Or can the statement offer a unique competitive advantage to winning business as demonstrated by our Sutherland case example, rather than the traditional print-legacy type color vs. B&W vs. paper vs. electronic discussions.
Stewart believes that the best way to get a Transpromo program going is to articulate the opportunity cost of not doing it. The Vectis case studies were used to articulate early opportunity cost which gained initial traction and cross section (marketing, operations, finance) buy-in. Most programs have since gone on to far more sophisticated levels, and continue to fuel themselves under a rigorous, measurement structure.
“I also believe printers need to spend a bit of time learning from direct markets” states Stewart. “When was the last time you heard a printer talk about a response rate’s statistical margin of error?”
Printers and Direct Marketers have a lot to learn from each other to make a more compelling Transpromo argument to end users but, the challenge to me remains simple: help the customer articulate the opportunity cost of not doing it using the tools the customer has. Only then can you move these programs to levels that you might both aspire to.
I’ve included a link to a variety of Vectis case studies here. I cite them often because they tend to be simple, straightforward proof points for one decision criteria at a time. Thanks Grant.
A few weeks ago I worked on an assignment with a paper supplier who starting offering digital printing on their custom papers. When I walked through the door of their production facility I felt as though I walked into a wall of heat and humidity. It was about 90 degrees and 90% humidity.
The great surprise was that they knew that temperature and humidity affected their paper so they kept them in temperature controlled rooms, but they must not have realized the issues that heat and humidity created in digital print production. This reminded me of the first time I learned the effects of temperature and humidity on paper. I was sitting in a classroom at GATF (Graphic Arts Technical Foundation) in the orientation class as a new staff person.
Working for GATF was a great experience because it was all about education. When I was hired I was the youngest consultant on staff compared to people who had 20 or 30 years of experience almost all in the pressroom. I was brought on as the “digital guy.” Most of the courses at GATF were team taught so I would talk about “digital stuff” and sit in during the other presentations. This is where I learned about the color, scanning, offset printing and paper.
It was during these presentations that I learned about the role that paper plays in both offset and digital printing. Like any newbie I had no idea that moisture in paper was important in print production. I was fascinated by the discussion of how paper absorbs moisture from the air like a sponge and it is called moisture content. I remember the questions we were asked in class. Why do we have wavy paper in the summer? Why do we have static in the winter? Why do we fight curl year-round?
Best Printing is at Comfortable Conditions
Of course now I know all about the issues of humidity and moisture content. The moisture content of a print shop is measured as relative humidity and it affects the amount of moisture in paper. Typical paper is produced to an absolute moisture content between 4.0 and 6.0%, meaning 4 to 6% of the paper’s total weight is made up of water. But once unpacked the paper can either absorb or dissipate moisture. In the best conditions the paper is designed to be stable in a 45-55% relative humidity (RH) at 72°F environment.
The key is making sure you purchase and use the right paper for the right use and maintain stable conditions which are close to those recommended. Different printing processes work best with certain amounts of moisture. In digital printing the moisture content can affect the toner adhesion, paper jams and the fuser roller temperature. In offset it can affect the interaction between the ink and the press, the paper and the press, and the ink and paper. Inkjet is affected by many of the same issues but is even more susceptible to dot gain or ink spreading, drying delays and ink show through.
On this assignment the focus was inkjet printing. There is a tremendous amount of new product development with inkjet papers because of the focus on inkjet presses. But in general inkjet paper is optimized for ink absorbency, color development, water resistance, light resistance, gas resistance, and run ability. The problem was that printing at 90 degrees and 90% humidity is troublesome for most digital printing processes.
Have you run into any issues when the temperature and humidity is too high in the summer or too low in the winter?
Howard Fenton is a Senior Consultant at NAPL. Howie advises commercial printers, in-plants, and manufacturers on workflow management, operations, digital services, and customer research.
For many smaller organizations, the cost as well as the amount of time required for the learning curve, procedural development and maintenance of an FSC certificate can be prohibitive. For years, the Forest Stewardship Council has had a program called Group Certification in place (FSC-POL-40-002), allowing organizations under different legal ownerships to band together under one certificate and share costs and resources by taking advantage of an economy-of-scale audit sampling program. This however this has been unworkable for most in the past.
The problem had been that program eligibility was limited to organizations having no more than 15 workers, or no more than 25 workers and annual forest product sales (i.e. printed material) of no more than $1,000,000 USD. This made certification unreasonable for many organizations as that kind of employee-to-revenue ratio was unrealistic at best. All of that has changed with a revised 5-year pilot program for group certification enacted by FSC-US which allows for any organization with less than $5,000,000 in annual revenue, regardless of employee count, to be part of a group certificate.
By utilizing a centralized group coordinator, multiple independent legal entities are able to share many of the basic procedural development and ongoing monitoring functions of certification without dealing with the learning curve and resource allocation required to do so separately. The net effect is cost and time reduction for each group member involved. This is similar to the Multi-Site certification program (FSC-STD-40-003) already employed by many organizations who legally own all of their sites. Virtually all FSC-certified mills, distributors and printers with multiple locations are currently certified under multi-site certificates and operate under the same type of framework as a group certificate.
Group certification has enormous potential benefits for at least three distinct types of groups in the printing industry. First are in-plants where the organizations do not compete with each other, yet have open lines of communication through either associations or proprietary list serves. Second are franchises in which each site is independently owned and conforms to a central office’s authority where the coordination function can be unified, and third are associations, whose members are organizationally connected and can band together for mutual benefit despite sometimes competitive relationships.
The primary requirement for any group is to first appoint a coordinator who can organize, develop, train and monitor the group’s activities. Member sites are subject to the coordinator’s oversight and must agree to adhere to an open and transparent process as a participant of the group entity. The group coordinator is responsible for developing procedural and operational templates for all of the participating sites for them to utilize and customize for their own unique usage requirements. Although each group member may have their own unique workflow and business rules, a collaborative effort can be made to develop systems that will work for the good of the all.
The group coordinator is required to perform initial internal audits of each member’s conformance as a precursor to certification to ensure workability of each site’s system, issuing corrective action requests where non-conformances are found, and working with violating member organizations to rectify and close out any outstanding issues. Once the FSC certificate has been awarded, subsequent annual internal audits occur during the course of each year, which are followed by certifying body site visits in which a representative sampling of sites (usually 20 to 25 percent of the sum) are audited every year.
For those unfamiliar, certifying bodies are the organizations accredited by the FSC to conduct day-to-day business activities on FSC’s behalf including, but not limited to, audits and trademark use approvals. Certifying bodies in the US are: American Green, Bureau Veritas, QMI, SGS, SmartWood and SCS.
As a requirement of certification, records of FSC activity must be maintained, collected and reported to the FSC through the certifying body in a summary format annually. This can be boiled down to each member organization’s total FSC activity without regard to client information should there be an issue with confidentiality.
Depending on the size of the group, the time required by the group coordinator for FSC oversight can vary. The development of procedures and data collection systems, along with training and initial internal auditing can be pretty intense, therefore the coordinator needs to be dedicated to the task. For a small group, as time goes on, the coordinator’s demands lessen. For a large group (potentially in the hundreds) the FSC coordinator’s activities can be closer to a full-time job.
Because the activities of each site affect the group as a whole, it is imperative (and required) that the coordinator has both the autonomy and authority through contractual relationships to enforce certification requirements. Each site must also have a designated site coordinator who acts on the group coordinator’s behalf, enforces FSC requirements at the site level, and complies with any requests made by the group coordinator in the course of his or her duties. Part of that authority is the ability of the group coordinator to suspend or remove any member at any time for non-resolution of conformance-based issues should they arise. The group coordinator is also responsible for collecting fees associated with certification from all participating sites, and for all coordination with the certifying body including obtaining trademark use approvals.
FSC group certification has huge potential. It’s already in use by forest land owners and other wood product manufacturing groups, sometimes with membership in the single digits (UMCFPG in Aitkin County Minnesota has 8), or the tens of thousands (Wisconsin’s MFL Program has 31,000 members) and has been proven to be a cost-effective solution across the board. The printing industry has not yet taken advantage of this system, but now that the maximum revenue level has been raised to a realistic level, the time is right to take full advantage of the situation.
Organizations no matter how loose or tight-knit who are interested in exploring this very realistic and workable option can contact me at , or can contact any of the certifying bodies listed at www.fscus.org/certifiers.
On July 26th, Ted Kulpinski posted on “Fighting the Good Fight” in reference to the AMA’s fight against US Postal Rate hikes. A number of people shared their perspectives on the lawsuit and related controversy.
The USPS has petitioned the Postal Regulatory Commision (PRC) to reject the AMA’s request. Jim Tierney at Multi-channel Merchant has a good article covering the issues.
My personal opinion is that the USPS needs the flexibility to renegotiate labor contracts. These “fixed costs,” which should not be fixed, are the underlying factor dragging down the basic supply and demand economics of our postal system. So – do you think that all of the postal workers should keep their jobs even if there is no work to do? Do you believe that a postal rate hike will cost jobs in other sectors? Do you think that reducing the amount of mail will have environmental benefits that will outweigh the economic impact? If you feel strongly about any of these issues – I’d like to hear about it (and you should tell your representatives in the Congress and Senate too!)
Some of you may be wondering – why did I decide to come to Océ from HP? It was a long trek from Boise to Boca Raton, but I’m already settling in – and finding the palm trees and South Florida atmosphere rather appealing. I’m sure I’ll appreciate it even more in February.
In all seriousness, my reasons were pretty simple. While I spent time in transactional and corporate in-plant and CRD printing at Xerox and Kodak, I was intrigued by the idea of taking what I’d learned at HP, Kodak and Xerox and expanding my field of vision to include production and transactional printing at a company that’s truly riding the convergence wave.
The market is evolving. It expects suppliers to successfully serve the needs of graphic arts customers, production printing customers and more. I see a multitude of synergies between the graphic arts and production/transactional disciplines and Océ serves many commercial print customers who are doing transactional work for large enterprises. It’s exciting to see the cross-over happening up close and personal.
According to InfoTrends data presented during last year’s TransPromo Summit Keynote presentation, the printed TransPromo market is expected to grow from 3.8 billion impressions to 27.5 billion impressions- a compound annual growth rate of 48.5 percent! This type of growth provides a unique opportunity for commercial printers like my friend Jack Glacken of Today’s Graphics in Philadelphia to grow their businesses while helping their customers to grow as well. Sometimes you find an opportunity to work together with customers to grow everyone’s business and just know that it’s the right thing to do. I think I’ve found that kind of opportunity at Océ.
Looking ahead, I can’t wait to see my friends at Graph Expo and share what I’ve learned in my first 90 days under the palm trees.
