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"Approximately 65% of label jobs around the world are produced in print runs of less than 50,000 labels, or under 6,500 feet"
Source: Labels & Labeling
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THE DIGITAL RENAISSANCE
The label and packaging industry is undergoing an exciting time as opportunities for unique, new products and services continue to pop up left and right. As we have come to find, labels in today's marketplace are much more than a tag displaying a product name, brand and container size. Nowadays each label must stand its ground and sell harder than ever before. This means that in order to succeed, a label must actively compete for a customer's attention by conveying differentiated brand identity, while also effectively incorporating contents and security features.
In the wake of this renaissance, private labeling and versioning has also grown significantly. And companies today exhibit a greater desire to reduce storage and waste. For Advanced Web, these new marketplace forces have created a different set of demands - as well as new opportunities to serve our customers.
Through our use of digital printing, we have adopted small order quantity capabilities which offer more opportunities for just-in-time, high performance service. Thanks to our HP Indigo ws4500 press, we are able to cut conventional flexographic printing costs by eliminating the expense of plates, while generating little or none of the waste. Overall, the digital printing process requires far less set-up time, thereby allowing for fast turnarounds that expedite our customers' products into the marketplace with ease.
This newsletter will help bring you up to speed on the digital technology faced by our company, and by our industry as a whole. It will discuss features, benefits and trends, all of which will help you to better assess whether or not our digital printing process is the right tool to help advance your business.
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Digital Market Trends
As noted above, the label printing and converting business is experiencing critical changes in how customers purchase their labels. The following market trends are key factors in why Advanced Web has found digital printing to be the right solution for several of our customers' unique and multi-faceted needs.
- Labeling and packaging print jobs are continuing to become shorter
- Customers are demanding shorter lead times and faster turnarounds
- Conventional printing processes are becoming increasingly expensive for low-volume orders
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When is Digital Printing the Right Tool?
 So, you can identify with the current market trends, but you're still unsure of whether or not digital printing is the way to go? Digital printing is a highly targeted labeling and packaging process that allows marketers to respond rapidly and cost effectively to shorter product life-cycles and ever-changing retail needs. It's also a tool that can be used for a wide range of purposes:
- Versioned products
- On-Demand/JIT
- Short runs
- Security printing
- Barcodes
- Private labels
- Packaging and test markets
- Regional and seasonal labels
- Event marketing
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Reaping the Digital Benefits
Besides producing high quality labels for numerous applications, digital printing also works to immediately lower production costs in several key areas:
- Eliminates the expense of plates
- Generates little or no waste
- Requires far less set-up time than conventional printing
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AW Follows Lean Initiatives with Help from Digital Printing
Digital printing has allowed Advanced Web to stay in line with our lean manufacturing initiatives. By supplying our customers with the precise amount of labels to meet their needs on a daily or weekly basis, we are able to help manage our supply chain effectively. Ultimately, we lower inventory and storage costs for both our customers and ourselves.
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DEPARTMENT HIGHLIGHTS: AW's Prepress Team Gets Digital
As digital technology continues to evolve, so too does Advanced Web's prepress department. The Prepress Team has undergone numerous changes in their job descriptions as a result of their commitment to staying in line with the latest and greatest of prepress technology.
The AW Prepress Team from left to right: Andy, Jonsey, Ken & Ryan.
With 68 years of combined prepress experience, this team has learned to adapt quickly to their ever-changing workflow as the digital revolution continues to broaden the scope of today's prepress expectations and capabilities.
Digital Platemaking:
For the past five years, digital platemaking has been a staple within the prepress department, fulfilling the desire for chemical-free operations throughout AW's facility. Besides being friendlier to the environment, the chemical-free process has become a reliable tool that yields predictable, quality results from one job to the next. Digital platemaking has also played a significant role in our lean manufacturing process, as it has simplified workflow by eliminating extra steps, as well as relieving costs for the removal of hazardous waste. Time and electricity savings are also met by eliminating the need for multi-stepped chemical processing. What traditionally took nearly four hours to complete one plate, is now reduced to less than one hour with the digital platemaking process. These elements of digital platemaking have become critical tools for the advancement of AW's lean and sustainable workflow, and have proven successful in benefiting both the company's and the customers' bottom line.
Digital Proofing:
Less waste is also accrued with the switch over from analog to digital proofing. AW's new Epson 7900 digital proofer requires less consumables than were previously generated through the use of ink sheets, containing acetates and other chemicals. While reducing the impact on the environment is important, our prepress department's foremost goal is to ensure consistent quality with each proof. The Epson 7900's 11-color printing system in combination with GMG ColorProof software makes it possible to easily manage colors, as well as accurately match custom pigments within its wide color gamut.
Color accuracy in the proofing process is a key factor for production reliability. Advanced Web's prepress department uses color quality control software to ensure that the proof simulates the subsequent printing process as accurately as possible. GMG ColorProof uses customized quality criteria that allows us the flexibility to define our own color strips, target values, measuring conditions and tolerances for consistent color results. This operation harmonizes color separations, stabilizes the gray balance and reduces color variation. Additionally, GMG Color Management reduces ink consumption, leading to improved printing properties, faster make readies, faster finishing and less waste.
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We will continue to update you on our position within this ever-evolving digital printing industry as trends and market drivers continue to shape our products, services and business methods.
For AW Case Studies profiling our various digital printing projects, or to learn more about how our services might align with your digital needs, please contact:
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