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 plants could use any paper they wanted and their own inks. I would have predicted that printers who use essentially the same kind of press equipment operated by experienced press operators would take about the same time to produce an identical printed piece. Yet, there was a variation of about three times from the most efficient to the least efficient—and a five times difference in waste.