Print Buying Direct

Print Production Management part 1 – 8th September

Managing production efficiently is all about automating everything that meets standard production parameters and making it easy to find and fix the bits that don’t. Production management is about getting ink on paper and finishing the job as cost effectively and as uncompromisingly as possible. The process should be optimised for the most commonly produced work and yet have the scope to support the unexpected jobs that every time printer faces on a regular basis. And of course, it should function across the Internet so that customers can view job status, order print online, proof and approve jobs, or simply trial ideas with live estimating from the printer’s MIS.

Weaving the web
There is certain irony to the fact that a number of years ago the Internet was perceived as a sort of death knell for the printing business. Nowadays web based tools have gained market acceptance for everything from online job submission through to complex collaborative workflows. The web has to be part of any production system development; however its contribution to a production workflow should be application and market driven. For example, there is no point at all to investing in an online soft proofing and approvals technology, if customers insist on hard copy output.
So saying, there is plenty of technology to support both requirements. We have even seen a leap in the capabilities of relatively inexpensive digital proofing systems to support spot colour proofing. Systems are available from a number of suppliers including market leaders GMG, EFI, Agfa, Screen and Perfect Proof. It is possible to set up these systems to function in a distributed environment using colour management technologies to ensure that remote devices are colour accurate to a specific target. For photo typing jobs, projects and publications online we have new technologies from FFEI and Dalim, based on gaming techniques, plus conventional soft proofing from vendors and such as Screen, Agfa, ICS and others. As with al things in digital pre-press, we can expect to see some important advances at drupa in May.

To be continued…

Tags: Buy Print Online, ink on paper, order print online, print, printer, printing, Printm

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