From the Editor: Inkjet for In-plants

In-plants were a force to be reckoned with at last month’s Inkjet Summit. I just returned from the event, now in its fifth year, after spending three days mingling with the nearly 30 managers in attendance — a six-fold increase from just five in-plant managers at the first Inkjet Summit.

Some of the in-plant managers who attended the fifth annual Inkjet Summit.

It was reassuring to see so many in-plants there and to know that the printing industry recognizes and respects them. As conference chair Marco Boer, VP of I.T. Strategies, said in his opening keynote: “The in-plants are becoming far more sophisticated. They’re ready to look at inkjet.”

This was the first year that the Inkjet Summit included an in-plant track. Managers in that track listened to a number of case studies about fellow in-plants that have added inkjet. In several cases, managers themselves presented these case studies. For example, Chuck Werninger of Houston Independent School District, Jason Fonner of HM (Highmark) Health Solutions, and Mike Lincoln, with the State of Colorado, were all there to personally tell their inkjet success stories.

The same three joined me for a panel discussion in which I not only asked them to expand upon their inkjet volume requirements, applications, uptime and finishing methods, but I solicited advice for other in-plants on how to research and test inkjet, and what pitfalls to watch out for.

In-plants at the Inkjet Summit.

Make sure you have an adequate workflow solution in place before adding an inkjet press, they advised. Also, be certain you have the volume to support an inkjet press. Look at what’s currently being printed outside that could be brought in-house and printed with inkjet. They suggested that managers not only test jobs on vendors’ inkjet presses, but also verify those results by testing them on an installed press.

The managers in attendance — several of whom said they are making serious plans to add an inkjet press in the near future — told me they found the discussion very useful.

Though the in-plants at the Inkjet Summit were all very interested in the technology, the majority of in-plants don’t seem to be paying it much mind. A recent IPG survey showed that 75% of in-plants are not investigating inkjet at all. But with inkjet-printed pages continuing to increase (from 2008-2016, continuous-feed inkjet saw a 73% compound annual growth rate in page volume, Boer noted), ignoring inkjet could be a serious mistake.

True, the original inkjet presses on display at Drupa 2008 were behemoths, but footprints and price tags have since dropped. Meanwhile, output quality and reliability have grown to the point that some users have replaced most of their toner devices with a single inkjet printer.

Still skeptical? See our story about one in-plant inkjet user, whose story astonished attendees at last month’s Association of College and University Printers Conference.