More passion, more energy, more footwork, more E N E R G Y!

Everybody wants more and inkjet buyers are no exception. More. Better. Faster. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Occasionally we get big breakthroughs, but usually OEMs are challenged just to bring incremental increases in productivity to the market at a cost the market can bear. That last part is the fancy footwork; figuring out how much buyers will pay for the next level of performance and then trying to fit into that price/productivity window.

I talked to technical experts from several inkjet OEMs to learn about the opportunities and challenges involved in bringing more productive presses to market. Part 1 of “We love fast inkjet,” dives into the decisions around printheads and supporting electronics, but that won’t be the end of the discussion.

Sometimes OEMs need to close a gap in their portfolio and don’t have time to start the development dance from scratch. Some companies are very transparent about reselling a third-party press to extend the range of what they can support for their customers. Ricoh’s relationship with Kyocera for the resale of the Kyocera TASKalfa 15000c is an example of this. However, there are numerous other companies who are “white label” resellers of this same press. A recent example of this method of expediting portfolio expansion through outsourcing is the Fujifilm Jet Press FP790 Flexible Packaging Press which,?as Nessan Cleary wrote last year, is a “rebadged” Miyakoshi?MJP30AXF?offering CMYK plus a double white application. Ralf Schl?zer shares the productivity gains experienced by the?first European buyer of the press, EcoFlexibles?in the UK.?Since concluding their beta test in December, the company has?accelerated into two-shift production with the press.

US printing company Tidewater Direct started their inkjet journey positioning themselves as an outsource partner for other printing companies that did not have the volume or staffing to justify their own inkjet investment.?Lois Ritarossi spoke with Geoffrey Eisenberg, about how this strategy helped them grow even as their customers because to bring inkjet production in-house.

While outsourcing can be an excellent tool in some cases, it can also be a big problem for in-house printing operations trying to justify technology upgrades. Printing jobs get outsourced because the in-house shops lack necessary capabilities, but they can’t justify adding those missing capabilities without visibility into and access to control of the volumes that are outsourced. Lois Ritarossi tackles this conundrum in “Inkjet justification – do you know how much is outsourced?”

It takes a lot of passion, energy and footwork for OEMs to bring new products to market and then again for customers to justify buying them. We’ll keep cheering you on.

More energy!

Elizabeth