Digital Roadmap for Commercial Printing Companies

Commercial Printing in the Information Age Commercial printing is one of the largest and most diverse industries in the world. Despite the current strong impact from radio and television and the fast-growing online services industry, printing is still the most widely used and most widely used information exchange tool. According to the assessment of the US Department of Commerce, the output value of global print products in 1997 was as high as 750 billion U.S. dollars. In modern society, prints cover every corner of the world. There are a wide variety of prints such as advertisements, brochures, books, brochures, index books, greeting cards, magazines, and so on. Printing companies range from large companies with thousands of employees to family-run small businesses with only a dozen or more 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 is divided into prepress, printing, and postpress, but new technologies With the continuous improvement of user requirements, the number of steps between prepress and printing has decreased, and the boundaries have become blurred. The two technologies that can reflect this change are direct digital printing and digital printing. Network data connectivity and digital prepress and printing technologies have opened up a whole new market for commercial printing, helping customers customize printed matter to meet their specific needs. Competition in other media also promotes the use of images, graphics, and color printing. It is predicted that color page printing will account for 14% of the total printing volume in 1994, and will account for 50% by 2003. In addition to various media, the development of digital technology has exerted a considerable influence on the printing industry: shortening the production cycle. , Reduce manual operations, improve product quality, increase automated workflows, and treat individual users as a market for development. These changes drive commercial printing companies to provide customers with the opportunity and challenge of new services with low cycle time and low prices. Compared with other aspects, technological changes are critical for commercial printing, except for the impact on the production sector. The technology update will bring a chain reaction to every aspect of the business, from financial plans, human resources, to marketing strategies. Investing in new technologies is a challenge for failure and success to coexist, so it is important to understand what technologies can meet the needs of users and markets, and to maintain competitiveness and maximize returns. The time to invest must also be known accurately. If you invest too early, you will find yourself struggling to open 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 never lose it. Once new technologies have been invested, it is very important how to better play their functions. What needs to be done is to train relevant departments and personnel. In any case, such training should be extended to all relevant departments because the digital workflow is inevitable. It will increase the integrity and dependence between departments. In addition to 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 know clearly 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 staff must be able to inform customers professionally how each technology is used. Careful deployment must be used in the early stages of using new technologies to understand this new technology and understand your company's situation. The customer gives you some homework to operate, allowing operators to gradually gain experience so that they are fully skilled in mastering new technologies. CTP and digital printing are trends in the printing industry. If printing companies do not plan to develop these technologies, then they will be in the future. I feel powerless in the competition. Large printing companies that have strong funds have begun to use digital technology, first R&D mode, and then gradually expand to various operating areas. For medium-scale printing companies to invest in new technologies, they must rely on two aspects: capital and technical skills. For these companies, the price of CTP is quite high, and they usually consider investing in printing presses first. In terms of technology, printers with prepress experience will be able to master the most advanced technologies, such as CTP, FM network and high-fidelity color. Small print companies can invest in CTP systems using polyester versions (such as Agfa's SetPrint), which can use existing laser imagesetters and workflows, such as Agfa's Select Plate. The marketing strategy for such companies is to produce short-duration monochrome, spot, and four-color prints. Providing Satisfactory Services to Customers As a customer, they hope that printing companies will produce short prints for them with low prices and high quality. Due to the popularity of desktop publishing systems, many customers can do their own front-end creativity and production, but many people understand that printing processes and technologies are completely different. For printing companies, they should be proficient in digital prepress workflows and understand how to use standard file formats (such as PDF) to simplify operations. For different print markets, printing companies need different business ideas. We can analyze one or two markets: If magazines print, each magazine company wants to receive a lot of advertisements. Because they use a desktop publishing system to typeset, they are required to allow print companies to allow them to modify the layout at the last minute to accommodate later-added advertisements. Due to the high circulation of magazines, the tight production time, the number of periodicals, and the high requirements for color and printing quality, it is most appropriate to use the CTP digital production system for production. However, they need to purchase a copydot scanner to digitize their advertising advertising film. Relying on quality and price to please customers is not enough. Printing companies need to do the following: First, establish and maintain long-term partnership with customers. The current 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 their competitors. How to Simplify Workflows and Maximise Their Benefits Digitalization is a must-reach goal, but everyone has a different path. There are many details that need to be dealt with in the digital workflow. It is necessary to strengthen the communication between the various departments within the company and customers in order to avoid the problems that hinder production. In CTP and digital printing workflows, the cost of error rework is quite high. If the problem occurs in operation, the operator needs to be trained; if the customer's file is in trouble, prepress preflight and faults need to be strengthened. Fixing functions and enhancing 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 page layout, low-resolution image avatars can be used, while high-resolution images can be edited on another work platform. In the final output process, high-resolution images replace the image avatars. Further, commercial printing companies can use Adobe's PDF and PDF-based workflows such as Agfa's Epson workflow to streamline the prepress workflow. PDF is a file format that includes all font images, etc., independent of the operating platform, it can solve a series of problems of prepress preflight. Once the file is "distilled" into PDF by Postscript, the raster processor can perform fast and efficient raster processing and screening of the file. Each page of the PDF file is independent, so a problem with one page does not affect other pages. Using a workflow similar to Agfa's Epson, its multi-output function for one raster processing ensures the consistency of digital proofing and printed matter, and the Epson workflow can automatically carry out large-scale printing and trapping, improving Printing company's efficiency. Using appropriate proofing equipment for proofing can reduce costs and save time. If the production volume is large, digital proofing can be used to reduce intermediate links such as film and syrup. The selection of digital proofing equipment will directly affect printing costs and production. For short-run or medium-volume printing, the printing company can use polyester version of the CTP, up to 15,000, which is the most economical direct plate-making method. If prints that are often printed are demanding and are long prints, then consider installing a metal platesetter, such as Agfa's Galileo, which can output 21 32.29 x 44.5" per hour ( 2400dpi) media allows multiple printers to print at the same time.Agfa's digital roadmap series also includes many related technologies and market roadmaps, providing valuable information for the development of commercial printing companies.