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06/23/2017
5 Truths: What You Need to Know About Production Inkjet Printing
Source: Printing Impressions, June 15, 2017
Whether your printing business has already adopted production inkjet printing capabilities — or is still sitting on the sidelines waiting for the technology to further mature — there is no denying that color and monochrome inkjet printing is rapidly displacing toner-based digital printing and also chipping away at conventional output. Inkjet page growth is exploding as more and more devices are installed, and the momentum will only continue to accelerate. In fact, inkjet technology is projected to account for 60% of all digital pages printed by 2019.
Here are five key takeaways from Inkjet Summit 2017 about the current state of inkjet printing technology and how it will impact your and your competitors' overall business:
Don’t fear obsolescence. Always high on the list of objections to adopting a new printing technology is the worry that a device purchased today will be uncompetitive with systems coming to market six months or a year from now. A production inkjet press takes that pain point away by being upgradeable in place with new software and expanded inkjet head arrays.
Be prepared to overhaul your business model. As one speaker put it, in embracing production inkjet, “the press is the easy part.” Everything else changes to accommodate the new capability: workflow, internal processes, quality benchmarks, customer relationships and more.
Master the data. Production inkjet presses run on it, and products printed on the devices have to deliver data to end users in ways that assure an ROI. This is why data management has become a “table stakes” capability for printers who want to succeed with the new process.
Pay careful attention to the paper. It’s referred to as the “fifth color” of conventional printing, but paper is the first color of what takes place on an inkjet press because of the different and sometimes unpredictable ways in which it interacts with water-based inkjet inks.
Get over the higher cost of inkjet ink. As “engineered” printing fluids, inkjet inks can’t be priced at par with traditional litho inks. Nor should they be. The cost justification is in their value-adding special properties and the highly cost-efficient form of production that printing with them enables.
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