Why Integrating Your Wide-Format Printing Devices Will Continue To Keep You In Advance In The Competitors

Wide-format print is among the most vibrant sectors in the digital print marketplace, as evidenced because of the 22,000 people who built their solution to Fespa London in June 2013. 3 teams are driving this progress: typical signal stores and display screen printers incorporating or switching to digital printing strategies; present wide-format users attempting to raise potential or enhance excellent and/or productivity to satisfy shopper demand; and professional offset printers or prepress experts that are eager to capture a larger proportion of their customers' print shell out.

Market analyst InfoTrends predicts a development label printer from the retail value of the North American digital wide-format print about the five-year period of time 2011 - 2016 of over forty six per cent, from US $16.one bn (&euro;12.4 bn) to $23.6 bn (&euro;18.one bn). A late 2012 survey carried out via the UK's Image Reports magazine showed that nearly two-thirds of respondents were expecting wide-format work to become a bigger part in their businesses about the next two years, and just above half were expecting to recruit additional staff in this time period.

There is still a high rate of technological development in wide-format print. New applications continue to unfold as new substrates, inks and marking technologies are brought to industry, leading to new opportunities such as label printing, packaging and package prototyping, interior d&eacute;cor, soft signage and fabric/garment printing and a extensive range of consumer and industrial applications in ceramic printing, in addition to the established signage and display graphics markets.

While the capabilities of individual wide-format printers continue to evolve apace in terms of resolution, colour gamut, speed of production and range of supported substrates, the integration of these devices into both the production workflow and the wider environment in their owners' businesses has largely been neglected.

The majority of wide-format printers are operated as stand-alone devices, often with a single RIP for each machine, and are isolated from other print production workflows or MIS/ERP systems. Products to facilitate this integration are available, but lack of buyer focus, awareness or trust in automation have been barriers to their uptake

Wide-format work typically requires more complex finishing than other types of print, sometimes to the point where the direct print costs are only a small part of the total job benefit. Complex one-off jobs will typically require creative input, management time, shipping and installation in addition to the printing process. With high levels of customisation being the norm, there may be a reluctance to believe that automation can help in what has always been a labour-intensive business.

This manual approach can lead to inefficiencies in production management, and may result in material wastage and high-quality inconsistencies both between devices and around time. Inability to load-balance work across different machines because colour matching cannot be achieved reliably can cause delays and waste production potential, leaving some machines idle while others are running full-time.

Every point at which manual processes occur is a point at which costs can rapidly be added and yet these costs are often unaccounted. Job costing models based on 'per square metre' pricing can lead to work being done at a loss, especially where time spent on file preparation before output is not recorded. Lack of detailed information about job set-up times and finishing operations, with missing or inaccurate media consumption figures make it difficult to analyse where bottlenecks are occurring and where money is being built or lost.