Lots of new presses entering the Northeast US right now – a few Komori and Heidelberg 10 color presses including a perfecting UV, some 8 color presses (including perfecting UV) and a variety of other presses including the first new mitsu I have seen up here in a long time. The printers who are doing well here are getting more efficient than ever before, and its pretty hard to compete with the speed and efficiency these new presses bring to the region.
Here’s a very interesting article about manufacturing in America. I think it pretty much fits the printing industry. After the recession the US printers who survived are leaner and more efficient than ever – without adding staff. Many have added new equipment and tools to automate their processes. In the US it is now becoming common to scan and track press data, and most proofs are automatically scanned and qc’d. US printing has been slowly improving, and becoming automated intelligent manufacturing as compared to the craft it used to be.
Making It in America – The Atlantic.
We have just completed the fourth G7 PCC Expert Certification Class in Hong Kong, China. The class was composed of 10 of the best G7 Experts from the Korea and took place at the Seoul Printing Center. IDEAlliance Korea is just beginning to roll out their G7 PCC. Hye-Jeong is in charge of IDEAlliance Korea and did a great job organizing the training. ( Jinyoung Kim is missing from the photo but attended as well.)
We traveled to Shanghai to attend and be part of the G7 Summit in Asia. The event was well attended with close to 300 attendees. In the picture above Brenda Pang, IDEAlliance China speaks about G7. Good speakers and a great event. Lots of interest. China has about 80 G7 Master printers, as well a large number of G7 Experts and Professionals.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
We visited Toppan Printing in Hong Kong. Toppan is one of the largest printers in Hong Kong, and a G7 Master. The staff and site were impressive. Everywhere they adhere to G7 and ISO, and the qc and process controls are impressive. Great job! In the slide show above (click to see) you can see some of the staff, the equipment, and their ISO room and G7 Master certificate. Awesome plant and great people!
We have just completed the third G7 PCC Expert Certification Class in Hong Kong, China. The class was composed of 11 of the best G7 Experts from the China region and took place at APTEC, the IDEAlliance Affiliate in Hong Kong. APTEC is just beginning to roll out the G7 PCC program in China.
In October 2011 the second G7 PCC Certification Class was just completed in Boston, MA. The class had a great group of expert students from across the industry.
G7 PCC Class No. 2, Boston, MA October 2011
(starting bottom left) Greg Radincic of PIA, Ron Ellis, PCC Instructor, Larey Kauffman of FujiFilm, Mark Gundlach of Xrite, and Top Left -Dan Wilson, Prepress-IT, Paula Gurnee of Ink Systems, Roger Shutte of JS McCarthy, Dennis Moore of Xpdex and Dave Rapp of Brown Printing.
G7 PCC is a new IDEAlliance Qualification program
Here is some info on G7 PCC:
First G7 PCC Printer:
First G7 PCC Agency:
First G7 PCC Experts:
http://www.idealliance.org/news/idealliance%C2%AE-certifies-first-g7%C2%AE-pcc-experts
G7 Summit 2011 Chicago - Steve Smiley
The 2011 G7 Summit was held in Chicago at Graph Expo. The summit spanned all 4 days and had a number of great speakers and interesting topics. There were also member/vendor presentations outside of the main presentations and a few of them were actually very interesting and well attended. Above Steve Smiley, chair of Print Properties leads a panel discussion.
Here is the first class of G7 PCC Experts, trained in July 2011
Here is the first class of G7 PCC Expert, trained in Chicago July 2011. They are (from left to right) Marc Levine – Colormanagement Group, Bruce Bayne – Alder Technology, Dave Hunter – Pilot Marketing, Son Do – Rods and Cones, Mike Ruff – Nazdar, Ron Ellis – Ron Ellis Consulting LLC, and Matt Fehn – Lacrosse Litho.
G7 PCC is a new IDEAlliance Qualification program
Here is some info on G7 PCC:
First G7 PCC Printer:
First G7 PCC Agency:
First G7 PCC Experts:
http://www.idealliance.org/news/idealliance%C2%AE-certifies-first-g7%C2%AE-pcc-experts
Here’s a picture of an ink ball. Ink balls are made by taking the little pieces of tape from the lids of ink cans and over time rolling them info a ball. The balls become incredibly heavy. Takes a long time to make one. Here is a old timer ball (held by Dave on the right) and a new comer’s starting ball (Dana on the left. Picture is at Keystone Printing, Manchester, NH.
