Bill Lamparter

Printers need to know how they can best serve the evolving needs of their clients, and the first step is becoming thoroughly immersed in the latest tools available. With knowledge comes confidence, which makes the printer a more effective shopper.

When the doors of Chicago's McCormick Place swing open to about 40,000 Graph Expo attendees on October 10, a large number of in-plant managers will be among them. Coming five months after the Drupa printing exposition in Germany, Graph Expo may not hold a lot of surprises, but that will hardly dampen the enthusiam that always accompanies this show. The one trend that stuck out at Drupa, according to Bill Lamparter, president of PrintCom Consulting Group in Charlotte, N.C., was the revitalization of the sheetfed offset press. Lamparter notes that most manufacturers unveiled "significant developments" to the sheetfed press, with Heidelberg practically rolling