More than 100 printing professionals attended PrintForum West, held last week at the Delta Chelsea in Burnaby, BC. The day began with an hour-long panel discussion featuring three of Canada’s youngest printing leaders: Nikos Kallas, President, MET Fine Printers, Richard Kouwenhoven, President, Hemlock Printers, and James Rowley, Vice President, Glenmore Custom Print + Packaging.
Neva Murtha and Catherine Stewart, both Senior Corporate Campaigner with Vancouver-based Canopy, discussed the need for transparency in making environmental production claims. They also provided attendees with a sneak peak of The Blueline Ranking 2017 to be released this July. The annual report analyzes and ranks the environmental progress driving some of North America’s top performing printers, which includes several Canadian companies in the top 10, such as Hemlock Printers, MET Fine Printers and The Lowe-Martin Group.
After lunch, two of Kodak’s technology leaders, based in the company’s nearby facility in Burnaby, which continues to make CTP devices and provide innovation, discussed technical advancements for improved profitability. William Li, Color Technology Manager for Kodak and Co-Chair of International Color Consortium, focused on the impact of colour technologies and standards in relation to how printers can find and then maintain new business. Patrick Kerr, Product Manager, Unified Workflow Solutions, Kodak, then focused on how printing companies can leverage cloud computing.
Andy Rae, who was appointed as Global Head of Marketing, Heidelberg AG, in April 2017, discussed the impact of Big Data and Industry 4.0 in printing, including the concept of The Smart Print Shop, which relates to leveraging print and media workflows to facilitate the complete automation of production processes. Rae also discussed Heidelberg’s Push to Stop operating philosophy for print manufacturing.
The day concluded with a panel discussion on the state of production inkjet, featuring four of Canada’s technology leader, including: Alec Couckuyt, Senior Director, Canon Canada, Professional Printing Solutions Group; Brad King, Vice President, Graphics Communications, Xerox Canada; Ray Fagan, Sheefed Product Manager, Heidelberg Canada; and Edward Robeznieks, Vice President Sales, Ricoh Canada.
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