Signs of the Times - September 2012 - 18

TECHNOLOGY UPDATE
Aren’t sales a company’s lifeblood? Here’s a true story: A photographer friend wanted large-format, Panda (my bogus name) prints for a photo exhibit, so he visited Panda’s website, unearthed the telephone number and called Panda’s sales department to get information on how to contact local, Panda-equipped printshops. Following several transfers, one person said, “Sorry, but the company doesn’t maintain a product users list.” Dead end, right? I heard the story. I said, call Panda’s corporate tech support. I knew the tech guys would have data on every professional user. Right off, the tech guy recommended a local printmaker who, following another telephone call, gained several hundred dollars in business. Further, the photographer is now shopping for a Panda desktop printer. I don’t reject the web’s effectiveness – but we sometimes forget what brings most business to the dance. Telephones. Okay, so don’t fire your geeks, but you might instruct them to prominently place effective contact information on your website’s first page. Next, ensure your telephone answerer knows exactly where to direct calls. Additionally, if your telephone service doesn’t include a “save” tag, you’re missing important conversations. By save, I mean a “press zero to talk to an operator” announcement. Most new phone systems demand absolute user obedience – choose a number or spell a name – but that’s a false efficiency because callers don’t always know who or what department they need. Be nice; allow callers to punch zero. Finally, here’s a marketingeffectiveness test. Have several unapprised friends or, better, hire someone, to blind search your company’s ad sources with a specific purchase in mind. The search should begin with a desire to accomplish something, not a specific product type. Require, also, the search to end with your researcher determining an effective product, and having a valid conversation with a named salesperson, to see the study through. Up the ante by not telling your researcher where to begin, so they start with a blank slate. Imagine your response if their report doesn’t consider your company. n

fields. The Konica Minolta Nassenger Pro1000 offered production speeds up to 1,000 sq. meters/hr. Equally impressively, the MS La Rio single-pass inkjet operated at speeds that rival rotary-screen printing. Textile-production and larger flag-printing houses are adopting these systems, which attest to a future for this rapidly growing part of textile printing. Single-pass printing Inkjet technology continues to invade commercial, digital-print markets where electrophotography once held sway, but such electrophotographic, print-machine producers as Canon, HP, Indigo, Kodak, Konica Minolta, Ricoh, Xerox, Xeikon and others recently exhibited powerful electrophotographic production devices at DRUPA. While electrophotography has held advantages over inkjet with single-pass production speeds, lowercost consumables, higher print quality and moistureresistant prints, some of the single-pass, inkjet-production systems at DRUPA have equaled and surpassed many of electrophotographic systems’ benchmarks. Also at Drupa, Memjet displayed numerous licensees’ printers equipped with its thermally actuated, microelectro-mechanical (MEMs) printheads installed on fullwidth devices to produce photographic-resolution prints at high speeds. The dye-based colorant limits these devices to indoor applications sans lamination; and, both ink and printheads are consumables. Packaging Xeikon and HP Indigo exhibited electrophotographic systems at Drupa, for imaging on folded carton packaging. In addition, Agfa unveiled an innovative, radiation-cure, inkjet ink for flexible-food package
18 SIGNS OF THE TIMES / SEPTEMBER 2012 / www.signweb.com

printers that could accelerate adoption of similar systems for the vast flexible-packaging industry. Digital-based fabrication The Organic Electronics Assn. (OE-A) exhibited digitalfabrication technology at Drupa and offered a timeline of developments for digitally printed electronics and fabrication. Such areas offer great potential for development and market adoption. Already, digital-fabrication systems have created computer, cell-phone and tablet displays. Legos Scientists and material engineers at such research facilities as MIT and Cornell University are researching digital materials that will interconnect in a manner similar to Legos, but at a nanometer scale. When finished with the product, technicians can disassemble and reuse the Lego-type devices many other times over, for assembling other objects from 3D CAD STL files or a 3D fabricating device. NASA has developed digital, electron-beam fabrication methods for the manufacture of metal and plastic parts in space. Body parts Finally, and somewhat amazingly, inkjet and other digitally controlled methods of printing and manufacturing are changing our world through such Wake Forest University research projects as the inkjet-printing of skin and body parts. Other research facilities are exploring ways to formulate single-formula medicines with the precision and accuracy that only digital deposition methods afford.

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Signs of the Times - September 2012

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