Agfa Graphics

When Otter Tail Power Co. decided to put its in-plant’s basement facility to a different use, Scott Nelson jumped at the chance to move his 12-employee operation to new quarters. And because the in-plant has a thriving insourcing business that brings in good revenue for the Fergus Falls, Minn.-based power company, Otter Tail didn’t hesitate to fund the move. In September, the in-plant began operating out of its new 7,200-square-foot facility, just a half block from its old location. Nelson says the new plant is better in many ways. “It’s more of a storefront operation,” he says. Customers used to have to go into

GRAPH EXPO took over Chicago for four days last month, bringing the best of Drupa to U.S. soil. Thousands of printers turned out to see what the 600+ vendors had to show. They saw several striking changes from years past. For one thing, offset presses were not a dominant sight. Wide-open floor space typified the booths of many offset vendors. Even Heidelberg had just one press on hand, focusing instead on using Prinect to fully integrate a print shop. manroland showed no presses, but highlighted its service contract portfolios. This contrasted sharply with the booths of digital press manufacturers, which crammed as many

RIDGEFIELD PARK, NJ—October 14, 2008—Agfa Graphics announced today that it has strengthened its sales management team across the United States. Dennis Ouellette is Agfa’s new regional director of Corporate Accounts leading a team of sales executives who focus on the large, national graphic communications firms. Dennis, a long-time Agfa employee, was promoted from his digital solutions regional sales position. Tony Petchar has been named regional director for the Western U.S. region. The Midwest is now managed by regional director Dan Maffeo, formerly with Fuji. Jack Baraczek continues as regional director for the Eastern Region. Peter Wilkens continues to head the sales and marketing organization

A GOOD PRODUCTION workflow is one of the main factors in meeting deadlines and profitability. Historically, the answer to creating an effective workflow has been to throw people at it. Not only is that expensive, but with the increasing complexity of the tools and processes required, it demands very skilled operators. And finding and training these operators can be a big challenge in itself. Now, automating everything is not always practical. For example, any process that requires some subjective decision making is not usually suited to automation; however, we should be using technology to replace many of those predetermined and repetitive tasks. That is

GHENT, BELGIUM—August 18, 2008—The world’s graphic arts experts have come together to release v4 of the Ghent Workgroup specifications (http://www.gwg.org/GWGversion4.phtml) for automated workflow efficiency in the range of application and output environments. v4 of the specifications supports Adobe Acrobat 9 - which itself includes Universal Proof of Preflight developed by the Ghent Workgroup. Heading the list of additional enhancements to v4 is a check for missing glyphs, one of the leading causes of preflight and page production frustration. GWG’s specifications have become the international benchmark for PDF quality assurance. The free specifications are utilized by designers, prepress and printers all over

GHENT BELGIUM—July 21, 2008—Access to the comprehensive, best practice workflow specifications and resources are now easier than ever for printers, prepress professionals and designers as The Ghent Workgroup (GWG) unveils its newly streamlined, fast website, www.gwg.org. In addition the GWG, the international cross-section of PDF and print experts known for creating, testing, and releasing specifications and best practices that have been proven to make it easier for users to ensure PDF document quality across workflows around the world; announces newly elected officers to its executive committee. The www.gwg.org Website The latest version of the website has been completely revamped to address the expanding population

DIGITAL PRINTING technology had its strongest showing yet at Drupa 2008, the world’s largest graphic arts trade show. The two-week event, which took place in Düsseldorf, Germany, last month, lived up to its billing as “The Ink-jet Drupa,” with “green printing” being the only challenger as a show theme, since virtually every exhibitor touched on it. About 391,000 visitors prowled the 19 halls of Drupa this year, (see sidebar about in-plants that attended), checking out the 1,971 exhibitors from 52 countries. Most of the attention, though, centered on the new digital printing devices, particularly those in the ink-jet category—though with prices ranging from $1

FOR THE second year in a row, ConocoPhillips Creative Services has won Best of Show in the In-Print contest. This time, however, the honor carries much more meaning for the 18-employee, Bartlesville, Okla.-based in-plant. “Last year’s project, it was all printed in-house, but the design was all handled by an outside agency,” notes Mike Cranor, senior printing specialist. The perfect binding was also done outside. This year, though, the winning magazine was done completely in-house, from the writing, photography and design, to the prepress, printing and binding. “So [being] able to bring it all in...that’s just real special to us,” says Cranor.

I’M GETTING ready to leave Germany as I write this, having just completed a grueling four days at Drupa, the international print show held every four years in Düsseldorf. It was a hot time—and I mean that literally. Thanks to the mugginess, and a somewhat different interpretation of air conditioning in Germany, I spent most of my time sweating and fruitlessly fanning the air with whatever press literature I picked up. It didn’t help that each day was filled with extremely long walks—miles of back and forth trudges between the hot meeting rooms where press conferences were held and the 19 exhibit halls.

ONE OF THE smartest things an in-plant can do to reduce production time and environmental impact is to go computer-to-plate (CTP), eliminating the entire film imaging and developing stage and all of the toxic waste issues involved. The quality, speed and efficiency improvements of CTP make it an excellent business decision for almost any shop. Many have already done just that, and are now ready for the next step up: low-process/chemistry-free or no-process plates. Going green has been a big story in the print business for the past decade, and chemistry-free plates are the next wave. “Non-process plate technology will improve to meet