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The Fulfillment & Mailing State of the Art was presented by
Graphic Communications Weekly Editor Gail Nickel-Kailing. She suggested that the CMO magazine (cmomagazine.com) has frequent articles on trends in marketing expenditures, which would benefit both of these ancillary services.

Radio Frequency Identifier (RFID) has been discussed for three Executive Outlooks with the expectation some day these transceivers will have their antennae and intricate components printed by means of specially designed conductive inks. This is futuristic R&D that may some day have its time in the sun. The current demand for RFID is very real and being spurred on by the dictates of the large chain retailers as a critical supply chain management tool. It was suggested to the attendees that as printers they should be querying their largest clients to understand the state of demand from their perspective. In concert with that the commercial and certainly packaging printers should be learning the basics of RFID and how they might be applied in a postpress environment. There were nearly a dozen RFID vendors on the floor of Print ’05 and Converting ’05 that can form an excellent core of contacts and library research on this potential niche product service.

Heidelberg’s Small Format Sheetfed Product Manager Joerg Daehnhardt gave an update on the direct image presses. The DI presses have plates resident in cassettes on press and laser imaged on press from server driven electronic media. He commented that refurbished DI presses are now available for about $150,000 as opposed to the new units listed at about $450,000. This is quite reasonable when you realize that the manufacturer makes more money from the razor blades than from the razors.

In talking with printers attending Executive Outlook it becomes apparent that many feel like the hamster on the circular treadmill in terms of trying to keep up with the latest print technology available. While there is so much good stuff out there, it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep up with all the tradeoffs. You make one decision and have little time before you need to get on the next treadmill to make the next technology decision. If you slip off and miss more than one generation of upgrades, the learning curve can be severe.