Celebrating Print at Graph Expo

As Ralph Nappi sees it, Graph Expo is more than just a place to kick the tires on some of the latest printing and binding equipment.

"This is a once-a-year celebration of our industry," proclaims Nappi, president of the Graphic Arts Show Co. (Graph Expo's organizer). "Print professionals who attend are essentially saying, 'this is the industry that I'm committed to, and I want to learn about new technologies, attend conferences, engage with suppliers and find a new way to make a buck.' These people see the industry as their future.

"There's a million reasons not to be there and there's one big reason to be there—to make a profit and look to the future."

The scores of in-plant managers planning to attend the four-day show in Chicago next month are certainly thinking about the future. If past shows are any indication, in-plants will be busy inspecting the latest inkjet production presses while keeping their eyes peeled for new services they can offer.

They'll also be converging on several in-plant events taking place during the show. These include three catered IPG events—a luncheon sponsored by Rochester Software Associates on September 29, and two breakfast events, one sponsored by Canon on September 29 and one by Xerox on September 30. Plus, the In-plant Printing and Mailing Association will hold a lunch event on September 30 open to all in-plants.

Here are some other highlights:

• More than 50 educational seminars divided into 11 tracks (including an in-plant track, plus others for wide-format, mailing/fulfillment, marketing and "future print"). In total, the show is offering 70 educational sessions.
• The Executive Outlook Conference (Sunday, Sept. 28), a four-hour sneak peek at some of the best and most innovative technologies on hand in Chicago, backed by economic and marketing information, printing trends and economic forecasts.
• Twelve different printing segments. The latest segment to join the lineup addresses manufacturing and industrial printing (3D, printed electronics and decorative printing).
• Fourteen industry-related pavilions focusing on areas like mailing and fulfillment, marketing, wide-format and future print. The newest addition, Plastic Print, resulted from a partnership between the GASC and the Society for the Plastics Industry (SPI). With the growth of 3D printing, the Plastic Print pavilion will examine opportunities for the marriage between printing and plastics.
• More than 50 co-located events: users groups, workshops, meetings, educational luncheons, etc.

And, while on the subject of numbers, Nappi has been tracking year-over-year attendee growth for the past four years, while physical vendor space has been trending downward. The latter is primarily a function of the trend of industry vendors to use their Graph Expo space for marketing and educational purposes, leaving machine demos for captive customer events at demo facilities or manufacturing plants.

Trends to Watch For

Productivity enhancements will be among the major trends touted by digital technology providers at the show, predicts Marco Boer, vice president of IT Strategies. From enhancements on RIPs, variety of paper sizes and cost-effective run lengths, vendors will be pressing hard to demonstrate digital's ability to out-perform offset presses.

"For inkjet, it's not so much about the run length extensions as it is about the ability to print on coated and uncoated sheets," Boer notes. "And all of the vendors are inching forward in being able to print on coated papers."

Wide-format digital printing, with its higher margins but lower volumes, will also garner significant attention, Boer notes.

"It's very profitable on a percentage basis, but does it dramatically impact the bottom line?" he poses. "It could, if you're making no profit at all. Hence, the interest in that market."

Speaking of profit centers, Boer anticipates seeing more vendors showcasing their product's ability to break into packaging applications, from folding cartons and corrugated to flexible film.

Boer also anticipates a healthy buzz will surround Management Information Systems.

"Going forward, the single biggest differentiator between someone making money or not making money is going to be an MIS system," Boer contends. "The companies that will be the most successful will be the ones that are data-driven, and learn how to get the most out of that data."

Other Themes on the Show Floor

While not tipping his hand to the actual Must See 'Ems winners, program coordinator Hal Hinderliter provides a taste for some of the other major themes that should dominate the show floor next month:

• Press formats, which were growing exponentially 10 to 15 years ago, are trending back toward half-sizes. Hinderliter anticipates more medium- and small-format offerings for both the press and post-press arenas. Digital offerings, naturally, will continue to impede on analog turf as far as sheet size is concerned. The upshot for shops with both is that much of the post-press equipment geared toward the sheet size is digital/analog agnostic. "We'll see more finishing devices with greater automation, including JDF, which has gone from a pie-in-the-sky idea to something everyone's expecting to have on their devices," Hinderliter notes.
• Short-run production is getting a shot in the arm in the form of tool-less die-cutting, scoring and perforating. Die-free production essentially paves the way toward variable finishing, of sorts. "These systems are making it possible to do one-off production of a certain shape," he says. "In other cases, they're not designed to do one-off, but are capable of doing extremely short-run finishing without the use of expensive and time-consuming setup of the steel rules that we've been used to seeing."
• Quality control and color measurement. Given the increased processing speeds provided by computers, Hinderliter notes that the camera systems inside presses that were once used to monitor registration and color density can now be used for image inspection and defect recognition. In the coming years, this will have a huge bearing on how printers do inspections. "The days of seeing eight to 10 people sitting around a table, sorting through boxes and pulling random samples to check quality are going to disappear," he says. "You'll get that information live, online, as the job is being printed. It's going to be more robust, more effective and, most importantly, be reportable back to the clients. This type of technology is eventually going to become a must-have for all printers."

Along the same lines, color management and measurement moving to the cloud is a hot topic, according to Hinderliter. Cloud-based management enables asynchronous communication of color standards between the brand owners and all of their production partners.

"From a brand owner's standpoint, it's an absolute no brainer to have a system they can use that will allow all of their vendors to independently collaborate and assure that their products are being printed the same in all of the locations that service them," he concludes.