The Offset and Beyond Technology Conference 2009

The Offset and Beyond Technology Conference was held at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, NV this year to a sell-out audience. manroland was a premier sponsor of this years event which was hosted by the Web Offset Association and Printing Industries of America.

Executives from many manroland customers were in attendance and found the conference a great place to discuss investment plans. Most were attending the event to learn of applications of new technology and to hear success stories on company and marketing strategy.

The conference covered the full range of topics on the management and technology tracks. Productivity, strategy, economic forecasts, and personnel were all covered with real world examples in the management series. Press troubleshooting, MIS integration, printing standards, digital printing, and color management were featured in the technology series.

There were seven “powerhouse keynote speakers” who discussed success stories and strategic issues to inform the group of printing leaders. Included as a featured speaker was Mr. Gerd Finkbeiner, Chairman of the Executive Board of manroland AG. Mr. Finkbeiner covered the current state of the printing industry from a worldwide perspective and provided insights into the North American market. He stressed the idea that printers need to focus on performance to deliver increasing value to customers while maintaining production costs. It is no long enough to cut costs, but instead utilizing new equipment and enhancements will provide printers with the means to create “value added printing” for print buyers. These new features like inline foiling, unique coatings and inspection technologies will offer better quality and a way to differentiate the printer and ultimately the advertiser. From sheetfed printers to newspaper production, new technologies were driving value. Combining heatset and coldset production was one example described by Mr. Finkbeiner as a way to increase the quality of newspaper printing for advertisers and readers. Another example was UV inks and coldset combined in one press by implementing a new technology UV dryer that runs at full news press speeds. The DirectDrive drives makeready time to almost zero which allows additional capacity on a 40” sheetfed press as well as short runs.

Finally Mr. Finkbeiner explained the four core values of the new manroland brand that are the driving force to make manroland “the high-performance business partner.”