From The Editor: Inkjet, AR And More

By Bob Neubauer

This month is the start of the busy spring conference season, which means between now and June I’ll be seeing a lot of in-plant managers. That’s fine with me, since I always enjoy hearing about the challenges and changes they’re facing back home.

Bob Neubauer, editor and content director of In-plant Graphics

Two of the biggest changes likely to impact in-plants are highlighted in this issue: production inkjet printing and augmented reality. A handful of in-plants are already incorporating these technologies—and at least one is using both of them: The World Bank Group. That in-plant’s senior project manager, Jimmy Vainstein, notes in his column on page 32 that “by embracing AR early you’ll be able to start offering added value to your printed pieces right from the start of any given project.” His in-plant has certainly been doing that. By actively demonstrating AR technology to internal customers, the in-plant is inspiring them to transform their projects.

World Bank’s success with inkjet printing has been well documented by IPG. As you probably just read on page 4, the shop recently opened its doors to inkjet users from around the world during the Jetcomm conference, giving the in-plant a chance to show off its HP T230 inkjet press.

Though Jetcomm got great reviews, an even better inkjet event is set to take place later this month: the third annual Inkjet Summit, a creation of IPG’s parent company NAPCO Media. This year’s conference will include more in-plants than ever, all looking into the possibilities of production inkjet. I look forward to talking with them about their plans to incorporate inkjet and discussing how good a fit this technology is for in-plants.

One in-plant that recently added a production inkjet press, the state of Colorado’s Integrated Document Solutions (IDS) operation, will be an agenda highlight at the first Digital Printing in Government and Higher-Ed Conference, happening next month in Washington, DC. Organized by IPG, the event will bring 50 or so in-plants together to learn more about print procurement, growth markets, emerging technologies, strategies to increase value and, of course, digital and inkjet printing. Colorado State Printer Mike Lincoln will detail his in-plant’s decision to acquire a Ricoh InfoPrint 5000 MP inkjet production press, along with other innovations at his Denver operation. See the full agenda at DigiGov.InPlantGraphics.com.

The other two big in-plant events are, obviously, the Association of College and University Printers conference, happening this month in Portsmouth, VA, and the In-plant Printing and Mailing Association conference, June 14-18, in Orlando. These are where I’ll see the majority of my in-plant friends, and I look forward to getting their take on inkjet, AR and other opportunities.

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Bob Neubauer Author's page

Bob has served as editor of In-plant Impressions since October of 1994. Prior to that he served for three years as managing editor of Printing Impressions, a commercial printing publication. Mr. Neubauer is very active in the U.S. in-plant industry. He attends all the major in-plant conferences and has visited more than 180 in-plant operations around the world. He has given presentations to numerous in-plant groups in the U.S., Canada and Australia, including the Association of College and University Printers and the In-plant Printing and Mailing Association. He also coordinates the annual In-Print contest, co-sponsored by IPMA and In-plant Impressions.

From the Editor: Inkjet, AR and More