In this short-run era, where a third of all jobs have run lengths of just 250 sheets, how are sheetfed offset presses faring? Industry observer Frank Romano offers his view.

By Frank Romano

THE WORLD of the printing press has changed. Color printing once mandated longer runs because the setup time (makeready) was an hour or two. When the first direct imaging (DI) press was introduced in 1991, its makeready was at 20 minutes, and over time it came down to less than 10 minutes. Today older presses are at about 60 minutes for makeready.