Production inkjet technology has transformed direct mail, books and transactional printing.

By Erik Cagle

What about quality? Well, a coffee-table book may require offset printing but, on the whole, Boer notes there is a greater level of acceptance than we might have witnessed 10 or 20 years ago.

"The [gap] between having the best in class and the average...is really not as big as it used to be," he contends. "I'm not saying that the quality of printing will go down, but we don't need it to be at the highest levels that we've always assumed we had to be at either."IPG