September 12, 2005

Since drupa 04, what MAN Roland products do you think have achieved the most commercial success in Canada and why?

PAUL TASKER: The ROLAND 500 — our 29-inch, three-quarter size machine, has been our most popular press recently. In fact, we’ve sold five in the last six months — four six-colors and one four-color — all with inline coating.

One major reason why is that the ROLAND 500 may be the most versatile press ever built. That equips printers to get into new markets beyond commercial printing. In fact, our most recent ROLAND 500 sale, which cannot be announced just yet, is to a leading packaging printer.

Can we expect to see a large format 900 XXL press in the Canadian market by the end of 2006?

Yes. In fact one of our extra extra large ROLAND 900s will be producing in Canada before next year closes. And expect to see more as time goes on. This is a press that can print almost as fast as your average 40-inch machine, but it gives you many times more product on every sheet you print. That’s equivalent to getting free production time. And the automation that we build into the ROLAND 900 makes for ultra-fast makereadies, so the 900 XXL’s bonus size is not going to slow you down between jobs.

Where is MAN with its DirectDrive technology and when will it be available?

A commercial version of DirectDrive will be launched at the IPEX show in the UK next spring. It will be available on new ROLAND 700s in North America in the months that follow, which means we may be less than a year away from having a DirectDrive press running here in Canada.

DirectDrive will further extend the technological lead we have over other pressmakers, and provide printers with significant time and cost savings. DirectDrive works by decoupling the plate cylinder in each printing unit from the rest of the press. That means all units of a ROLAND 700 can be plated simultaneously. So if you’re running an eight-unit press, a plate changeover will take less than one minute instead of eight. What’s more wash-up can take place simultaneously while the plate change is occurring on a DirectDrive press, saving you another chunk of time.

DirectDrive will also speed production of jobs that require different versions. It allows operators to switch out the black plate, for example, while the press continues to print. In this age of target marketing, that will be a huge productivity enhancement, because you’ll no longer have to stop the press, then get it back up to speed to print different batches. You can do it all on the fly. So you can be more responsive to your customers, while saving a bundle in production costs.

How is MAN Roland in Canada going to protect and improve its position now that KBA, Komori, Mitsubishi and Heidelberg all seem to be in play?

We welcome the competition because their latest offerings spotlight how advanced our technology is. We’ve already fully developed our three-quarter size, full-size and XXL-size press platforms, while they’re still playing catch-up. We’re now devoting our R&D to take our presses to the next level to provide printers with inline everything. That equips them to add more value to every job in a single pass, which lowers their costs and raises their profit margins.

Overcapacity is still a problem in the market place. How do you think the market will change over the next three years?

Older, non-automated equipment is going to price itself out of the marketplace because it simply cannot compete with today’s advanced machines. Those presses will be taken offline, which will ease some of the overcapacity. We’re also looking for a continued rise in print demand in North America, as the economies on this continent continue to expand.

How do banks and financial institutions look at printers today compared to 2001/02?

Banks are best friends of printers who have a solid balance sheet. And they’re most willing and able to provide financing on new equipment that can prove its future potential by automating as much of the printing process as possible. So banks are again bullish on printers, as long as you’re investing in the right technology.

Why is MAN Roland speaking so highly of VistaPrint?

Because VistaPrint is working proof of how a printer can profit and grow by fully taking advantage of Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM). The company runs four ROLAND 700s, five-color perfectors with in-line coating. Two have been working in a European plant for over a year. The second two are the production engines of a new identical facility VistaPrint opened in Windsor, Ontario earlier this year.

VistaPrint is applying the principles of CIM to drive out costs and improve response times. It connects customers directly to its CIM chain by providing a layout program that they can use right on the VistaPrint website (www.vistaprint.com) to produce business cards, brochures, even refrigerator magnets.

CIM enables VistaPrint to produce over 10,000 unique print jobs per production day in each plant, while using a minimal amount of production labor per order. VistaPrint reports it achieves four production cycles per hour on each of its ROLAND 700s, with less than 25 waste sheets per makeready. Every one of those cycles involves the printing of literally hundreds of individual jobs, which are ganged-up on the press’ 41” sheet by a proprietary program that VistaPrint developed. So when it comes to short-run color efficiency and CIM effectiveness, it doesn’t get any better than VistaPrint. We don’t expect every printer to follow the VistaPrint model, but this success story makes them aware that the more you automate, the greater your rewards.

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