The pandemic has underscored the true potential of production print.
The printing industry has transformed itself into a hotbed of innovation. If that sounds like a joke, you haven’t paid much attention to the past three months (and most likely even longer).
What caused significant disruption to our lives, has “forced” others to speed up ingenuity and innovation. Unlike office imaging, production print—as much as many individual businesses have suffered and are still struggling to survive—has become a literal lifesaver in many regions far and wide.
Many printing operations have lived up to and exceeded expectations in their “essential business” status and have helped reposition how printing as an industry and printed communication are valued (again).
In-Plant Printing
From school districts, across colleges and universities to hospitals, as well as the in-plants within those organizations, the dedication of their staff has not only secured their survival but also helped others thrive. While some school administrators wrongly assumed that students of all ages and backgrounds would have access to computers and online learning, in-plants in the educational sector have once again shown how much print and paper are still vital. Many in-plants produced and helped deliver thousands of educational packages covering the basic needs of teaching and learning.
Many in higher education not only delivered standard learning packages but also went the extra mile to create personalized graduation packages to ensure that during physical distancing, students received messages of appreciation and hope.
Moving to the health sector, in-plants (and office imaging/MPS) have seen unprecedented workloads.
In both cases, advanced technologies, services, and software/hardware collaboration are backing up high productivity and low downtime. Inkjet printing, quite widely adopted by now, and workflow solutions, such as web-to-print, job onboarding, workflow management and monitoring, job rescheduling, document reengineering, PDF optimization, and, in many cases, postal optimization, are widely adopted and have effectively empowered the staff running these print operations. Delivering printed communication on time, especially in times of a health crisis, can be vital. In all sectors, including education, health, and government, print helped reach all audiences regardless of their connectivity.
But that’s not the only area that has seen accelerated success.
Packaging Solutions
A few months ago, innovation primarily focused on environmentally friendly packaging solutions. Driven by the market, the industry almost reverted from less packaging and quickly adjusted its focus on sterile and antiviral packaging with warp speed to own this opportunity. Efforts now include evaluating polymer and biopolymer-based technologies to reestablish shopper confidence by ensuring what they buy is clean inside-out. The long-term impact on sustainability must be monitored. Still, it undoubtedly plays a large part in the development process, as the demand for one new solution can’t sacrifice the other.
On a side note, I’d like to remind everyone of direct-to-object printing, which already helps to avoid the additional printed label, and already helps solve some of the hygiene packaging challenges (think of glass or tin).
Label Printing
Innovation here has seen significant upgrades to what most of us struggle with: sticky stuff. We know we need labels; however, how do you remove them? In a day-to-day scenario, this might not seem like such a big headache. In mass-recycling, the challenge can be a showstopper. Keep the word “water-soluble” in the back of your head.
From Innovation to Initiative
We’ve heard of in-plants going the extra mile. Print services providers (PSPs), of course, did and are doing the same. Some by optimizing what and how they are delivering print, others by assisting their customers in improving their messages visually: exchanging words for graphic elements, using color, using embellishment, and above all, using intelligent personalization wherever they can. Signage printing and large-format printing are assuming a renewed position, exceeding previous expectations.
Outlook
The above is only a short list of examples highlighting the power of print, ingenuity, and innovation. Many areas of production printing couldn’t
be covered in this piece. As always, there is room for even more innovation and advanced technologies to go hand-in-hand with print. Just wait until everyone is back at work and watch!
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