Printing and Publishing
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Developments in book production PDF Print E-mail
Written by Sean Smyth, 2007   

In book production, digital printing seems to have found its natural home. What then, asks Sean Smyth, can be learnt from this best-practice example?

The end user printing marketplace is changing, with declining run lengths and customer demand for faster turnaround. This will drive digital printing technology to develop to provide faster productivity, better and more consistent quality, increased reliability and lower unit costs. Increasing numbers of printers will install equipment to broaden the range of services offered to clients, as more companies use the technology they will find new opportunities and niches and will learn how to best use the systems.

Digital printing is forecast to increase its share of print markets over the next few years, at the expense of all traditional printing processes. This will be through some replacement of existing litho, screen and flexography work as well as new applications. A significant part of this growth will be in organisations, offices and retail outlets with users printing stationery, in-house material, promotional and transactional documents by end users using desktop and office-based printers.

The traditional printers are not standing still; increasing use of computer to plate for both litho and flexo makes shorter runs more economical. Companies will use the overall mix of available production technologies to produce work at the most economical way. The costs of digital printing cannot be looked at in isolation - the work mix and cost mix in a particular operation will provide the crossover points for economic production in a particular process.

The following transition tables summarise the most likely technical developments that will impact specific imaging areas (colour and mono variable data printing, on-press imaging and computer to plate technology) over the next five years.

Success with books

Books are a very successful application of digital print in commercial printing. Many book printers have embraced digital printing in order to offer publishers very low print runs economically thus allowing more titles to remain in print. There are two business models for printing books digitally:

In the on-demand model, the publisher or self-published author pays a fee to get a book into the system, and then pays a much smaller printing fee for each copy of the title. Books are printed when needed, possibly singly, by distributors and booksellers. Ingram's Lightning Source is the most advanced example of centralised on-demand printing at the distributor. Transactions with the book buyer are handled by a bookstore passing orders to Lightning Source, or via Web e-procurement. For printing on demand at bookshops, a distributed system with printing and binding equipment is needed. It must be a compact system to produce the textbook block, colour cover, perfect binding and trimming. It must be easy to use by retail personnel and low investment in order to justify the production of a few copies per day.

The short-run scenario involves printing small batches of books, perhaps 20-500 copies, as a standard order placed by the publisher and the printer. From the publisher's perspective there is no operational difference between short-run digital printing and ordinary offset runs.

In both cases books are shipped to the warehouse or the distributor, where they wait until orders are received. The advantage of digital printing is that less working capital is tied up in the print run than if offset is used, though the unit cost of each book is higher. Most are produced as part of the manufacturing capability of a book printing company or group as a short-run arm.

One of the key benefits offered by digital print is the improvement of inefficient supply chains of printed products by reducing cost and time in the overall process. The book publishing market, where the costs involved with unsold books and maintaining lists in print are major problems, is one of the early adopters of digital print. There are now several well-publicised examples of print-on-demand applications replacing conventional book manufacturing.

The area of greatest change, enabled through digital printing, is the printing and manufacture of books. The abandonment of the net book agreement and the arrival of new retailers, supermarkets and the Internet booksellers have impacted this market. The conventional chain is shown in Figure 1.

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Figure 1. Conventional book supply chain.
 Traditional book manufacturing used mostly offset litho printing and binding. The books are made for stock, supplied into publishers' warehouses then distributed to the retail bookshops. Internet booksellers are now established retailers, often having their own warehouse and using courier services or the post to deliver titles to consumers.

With digital printing technology, the concepts of the virtual warehouse and in-store production become reality. In the virtual warehouse printing is still centralised but books are digitally printed on demand. For these books there is no stock and no need for warehousing. Systems such as Océ's Bookstore are being offered to allow the virtual concept at printer or distributor. They can receive files and orders remotely to satisfy end clients regardless of location.

Printing may be at a printer or somewhere in the distribution chain as is the case with Lightning Print, thus eliminating the conventional printing stage and the need to transport books into the distribution centre. They claim a mutually advantageous situation for customer, bookseller, publisher and author. The loser is the conventional printer and warehouse.

With on-demand printing there is reduced waste. Evidence suggests that up to 30 per cent of stock in the chain remains unsold and may have to be repulped. As many books are supplied to retailers on a sale-or-return basis there are clear opportunities to increase efficiency with the print on-demand model. Publishers then only produce books that have been ordered. Taking this one stage further leads to in-store production (Figure 2).

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Figure 2. In-store production for books.
 In this scenario a low-cost, easy-to-operate, digital print-and-bind system is housed within the bookstore to produce a book for the customer while they wait.

Digital printing offers a better way of doing some things. It may well take over from conventional printing at some long-term future; in the medium-term it is likely that there will be combinations of digital print with conventional technology. This first appeared in the label sector with Mark Andy and Nilpeter adding laser and inkjet technology to their unit press designs.

In commercial printing the use of hybrid systems is growing. In litho many sheet-fed machines use flexo varnishing and coating units as well as specialist printing units and there is a trend to incorporate digital printing capability.

Heidelberg showed their VDP921/UV Concept Printer at the 2000 DRUPA exhibition, mounting a Spectra 600dpi assembly onto a QuickMaster press, to provide an Imprinter capability on a high-quality offset press. The print head is capable of printing 600dpi at 300 feet per minute (generating 300 million drops per second). The current status of the project is not clear with Heidelberg currently reviewing its positioning in non-core markets.

Heidelberg has a relation with Domino to distribute inkjet machines through its sales channels in certain markets and showed a sheet-fed machine with Domino Bitjet technology allowing variable data printing, for addresses and personalising text in-line.

Xaar and MAN Roland have a joint collaboration to explore and develop digital inkjet printing systems for coating applications to be used in traditional offset printing presses. KBA bought Metronic, a specialist manufacturer of inkjet printing systems to expand its product range into new, high potential markets. Web offset has long used Domino Videojet heads for text printing, and wide format Kodak VersaMark heads to offer more sophisticated in-line personalisation.

Agfa is becoming a major player in inkjet printing with wide format Sherpa proofers, with Mutoh for wide format inkjet printing with the Anapurna system, the Dotrix ownership and an interesting hybrid screen/ inkjet machine, the M-Press. This is a high-speed flatbed inkjet and screen press that has been co-developed with Thieme in response to customer demand for economical, high run-length digital printing.

The device is a modular design allowing the multi-colour inkjet unit to be linked with Thieme 5000 XL series screen-printing modules. The M-Press can be configured into a fully automatic hybrid printing line. It allows a white coating to be applied by silkscreen, overprinted in process colours and then varnished or a spot colour applied in a single pass. It is one of the first launches offering users the versatility of screen-printing and the productivity of an automatic in-line solution.

The likelihood of using hybrid technology is high with the impact of the development also significant as printers look at ways of increasing their productivity.

The main developments over the next 10 years will be integrating digital printing, particularly the more flexible inkjet, into conventional sheet and web machines. This will allow multiple versioning and personalisation applications to be produced more efficiently in a single process.

Takeaways

  • Digital printing is being driven to provide faster productivity, better and more consistent quality, increased reliability and lower unit costs.
  • Over the next few years, digital printing is forecast to increase its share of print markets. This will be through some replacement of traditional processes, and by providing new applications, particularly to organisations, offices and retail outlets.
  • Traditional processes are not standing still. Companies will use the overall mix of available production technologies to produce work in the most economical way.
  • One very successful application of digital print is books. There are two business models for printing books digitally: on demand, where books are printed when needed, possibly even singly; and short-run, where small batches are printed at a time. Both provide an improvement to an inefficient supply chain.
  • Digital printing enables the concepts of the virtual warehouse and in-store production to become a reality. Both benefit the bookseller, customer, publisher and author. The loser is the conventional printer and warehouse.
  • As many books are supplied to retailers on a sale-or-return basis, on-demand printing provides clear opportunities to increase efficiency and reduce waste.
  • The clear, long-term benefits of digital printing are encouraging development of medium-term solutions in the form of systems combining digital print and traditional processes.
  • Companies embracing the combined technologies include: Mark Andy and Nilpeter, Heidelberg, Domino, Xaar and Man Roland, KBA, Agfa, and others.
  • The main developments over the next 10 years will be integrating digital printing, particularly the more flexible inkjet, into conventional sheet and web machines.

Sean Smyth is an independent industry consultant, specialising in the graphic arts industry. He writes regularly for Pira.
 
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