Inkjet Immersion

Adding a high-speed, production inkjet press is not a "build it and they will come" endeavor. Before moving forward, you'll need a formal strategy in place that anticipates more than simply transferring jobs from existing offset or toner-based presses.

This critical point was reiterated in both the general sessions and in the breakouts at the recent Inkjet Summit, held in April at the Ponte Vedra Inn and Beach Club, outside of Jacksonville, Fla. In fact, inkjet veterans emphasized that the work filling many inkjet presses is largely new and not replacing existing jobs.

Listening with rapt attention were some 90 senior managers and business executives—including several in-plant managers—all interested in purchasing production inkjet presses. They were attending the Inkjet Summit to learn about the business opportunities offered by integrating a high-speed inkjet system, and to better understand the tools and equipment required, along with the steps needed for a successful implementation.

Organized by nGage Events and North American Publishing Co. (In-plant Graphics' parent company), the Inkjet Summit was structured as a hosted buyer event. Pre-qualified printers received all-expenses-paid trips in exchange for committing to attend all of the educational, one-on-one and social events.

The 36 participating sponsors comprised the major manufacturers of production inkjet presses, feeding, finishing and postpress equipment; leading inkjet paper/substrate and ink suppliers; and providers of workflow and personalization software. Among them, Keynote-level sponsors this year were Canon Solutions America, Fujifilm, International Paper and Ricoh. As voted on by printer attendees, Canon Solutions America was honored for giving the "Best Sponsor Case History Presentation." The "Company to Watch Out for" winner was Fujifilm.

"It was great to see noticeable improvements from last year's event to this year," remarked second-time attendee Jimmy Vainstein, senior project manager at The World Bank's Printing & Multimedia Services operation, which installed an HP T-230 continuous-feed inkjet press last year. "This time around it was a bigger event with more users in attendance. This was very positive. As more people come to these events there is more interaction between industry members."

A Detailed Market View

At the Inkjet Summit, industry analysts and experts discussed the size and shape of the market, where the opportunities lie, what to watch out for and steps to take when integrating this rapidly growing technology. In addition to keynote presentations, special interest breakout sessions focused on the four key areas of opportunity for production inkjet: book production, transactional work such as bills and statements, direct mail and (new in 2014) general commercial printing. These breakout sessions comprised industry expert presentations and user panels.

These were not lightweight sessions; some of the questions and answers got quite detailed and fostered additional one-on-one discussions elsewhere during the conference. The learning and peer-to-peer networking were non-stop throughout the event.

About three hours were also set aside each afternoon for attendees to meet with vendors individually—for about 30 minutes at a time—to talk about the challenges they face and how they think inkjet might help them address those challenges. The vendors then explained how their equipment, software or consumables might be a fit for that operation.

An All-star Advisory Board

The Inkjet Summit was chaired by Marco Boer, vice president at digital printing consulting firm I.T. Strategies. Other industry experts who participated and served on the advisory board were Elizabeth Gooding, of Gooding Communications Group; Jim Hamilton, of Info­Trends; Skip Henk, of Xplor International; Charlie Pesko, founder of InfoTrends and the former On Demand show; and Mary Schilling of Schilling Inkjet Consulting.

One element that made this second iteration of the Inkjet Summit so powerful was the presence of numerous print providers who were early adopters of inkjet technology and were willing to share their experiences. One general session printer panel discussion featured five veteran inkjet users (including Vainstein, of The World Bank) discussing the implementation challenges and other issues they faced. They called for vendors to move faster to make current machines more productive through paper, ink and workflow enhancements. Panelists also cited a need for more tools from suppliers to help them better educate their customers about inkjet's capabilities.

Robust and Dependable

At breakout session printer panels, seasoned inkjet users discussed their overall experiences within specific product niches. All current users reported overall satisfaction with their continuous-feed inkjet devices, further reinforcing that inkjet technology is more robust and dependable than other new technologies at equivalent stages of their lifecycle. The bigger challenge is filling capacity and training the sales staff to articulate the new value propositions that production inkjet provides.

"The ability to produce 100 percent variable color graphics at speeds upwards of 4,000 letter-size images per minute opens up all types of new possibilities for the end customers to communicate with their customers, provided the data is in place to address those customers with a high degree of relevancy," pointed out Boer. "This means that the print shop sales staff has to now sell well beyond the traditional print buyer and has to communicate with both the marketing department, IT department and, most preferably, the CEO of the end customer organization."

Because these continuous-feed systems all come with seven-figure price tags, the investment is significant, and inkjet veterans and vendors alike were quick to caution attendees that a formal plan and strategy are essential to success. When implemented based on a strategic plan, high-speed inkjet presses tend to bring in new business from existing clients and from new customers. Inkjet press owners all agreed that being able to eliminate or reduce warehousing costs, print short runs, provide customized or personalized documents and eliminate preprinted forms all resonate with document owners—who are ready and willing to give work to print providers who can deliver on these promises. Many of the established inkjet users started with just one continuous-feed press, now have three or more, and expect to add additional systems to keep up with demand.

Print Head Life Impressive

Two other issues relative to inkjet technology also came up: print head life and print quality. With tens of billions of pages now being printed annually by production inkjet presses, head life has proven to be a non-issue. In fact, head life is turning out to be far longer than vendors expected, and the more an inkjet press is run, the better the heads seem to work. Also, vendors have instituted measures for cleaning and servicing heads to increase their useful lives.

Print quality is also not a concern for the applications being run on big inkjet machines. The range of jobs that can be successfully and profitably produced on inkjet presses is growing. Direct mail, transactional and text books are among the leading applications.

However, paper selection still drives just how good the quality can be, and attendees heard that while paper is not the barrier to inkjet success it was a few years ago, the selection of papers is still limited. But this is changing rapidly and new, inkjet-friendly papers from the major paper companies are reaching the market.

Cut-sheet Inkjet

The emergence of cut-sheet color production inkjet presses was also a topic of discussion, especially within the new commercial printing track. Today's primary market offerings include the Fujifilm J Press 720 and the Screen Truepress JetSX, but other devices from the like of Komori, Konica Minolta and Canon Solutions have been announced and are in various stages of product development and commercial availability. These cut-sheet models will enable small- and mid-size printers, which would lack the need for a continuous-feed press, to acquire a smaller-footprint and more affordable color inkjet printer. These devices could supplant a range of low- and mid-volume commercial printing jobs currently output on sheetfed offset presses, as well as the shorter-run and variable data work currently being produced on toner-based digital printers.

Praised by one prominent printer attendee as the HP "Dscoop user group meeting equivalent for inkjet press users," the Inkjet Summit garnered positive feedback from industry analysts, sponsors and, most importantly, the printer attendees. As Jim Hamilton wrote in his Info­Trends blog describing the open-source conference, "The 2014 Inkjet Summit was a fascinating and engaging event. Print service providers in a buying cycle should definitely consider attending next year if [they] can wrangle an invitation from the organizers. The Inkjet Summit has a bit of a user group feel to it, because of its high-volume inkjet focus, and that's an important benefit to attendees because they can participate, share and learn in a multi-vendor environment in ways that just aren't possible at other events."

One printer attendee who runs a substantial direct mail operation summed up the value of the event well. "The Inkjet Summit is an ideal way to really understand the things I need to consider and help me decide which system is the best fit for my business."

Noel Ward also contributed to this article.