The Future of Digital Printing Starts Here |
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| 03/13/2002 |
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Interview with Wolfgang Pfizenmaier, Management Board Member for the Digital Solution Center of Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG (Heidelberg) and Venkat Purushotham, President of NexPress Solutions LLC
At CeBIT 2002, Heidelberg will be showcasing its entire portfolio of digital printing solutions. Mr. Pfizenmaier, what is Heidelberg’s position in this sector and how important is it for Heidelberg?
Wolfgang Pfizenmaier: Heidelberg is now firmly established on the digital printing market. We have a range of exciting solutions available for all commercial applications, covering everything from digital color and black- and-white printing to digital offset printing. And of course, our joint venture with Kodak has increased our status as a solutions provider immensely. After just four years of development, we were able to successfully launch the NexPress 2100 onto the market. To put it simply, I cannot imagine Heidelberg without digital printing, just as I cannot imagine digital printing without Heidelberg. We are all agreed that digital printing will play a huge role in shaping the future of printing as a whole. At the present time, we’re just starting out with many applications - one-to-one marketing being one of them. In a few years’ time, these forms of marketing will of course be part and parcel of our everyday lives. Growth is expected to be tremendous. We predict that, in around ten years’ time, Heidelberg’s digital printing sector will have drawn level with the sheetfed offset sector in terms of sales and earnings. It is however also clear that digital printing cannot and does not replace offset printing, but instead serves as a useful complement to it.
What roles do the three digital print solutions NexPress 2100, Digimaster 9110 and Quickmaster DI 46-4 Pro play in relation to each other?
Wolfgang Pfizenmaier: With the start of NexPress 2100 sales at Print in Chicago, Heidelberg has finally achieved its goal of becoming a comprehen- sive supplier of commercial digital printing solutions. The NexPress enables Heidelberg to offer its customers a system that blazes new trails in terms of speed, press availability and print quality. With the Digimaster 9110 and its extensive range of software and finishing applications, Heidelberg’s market position is an excellent one. More than 2,500 systems have already been sold, and the output management software “DataXceed” means we’re also offering an attractive solution for our data center customers that compares extremely favorably to those offered by our competitors. The Quickmaster DI 46-4 Pro is also particularly ideal for short-run color jobs in offset quality. Short setup times for fast job changes make real-time, on-demand job processing possible. The DI can also be combined with a Digimaster, for example. This means that manuals printed on the Digimaster can be put in color covers printed on the DI. The same applies for the combination of the NexPress and Digimaster. For instance, the Digimaster can be used to print a black/white job that can then be supplemented by inserting color pages printed on the NexPress. I think everyone is aware that we offer a wide and flexible range of solutions for all our customers - both present and future.
Mr. Purushotham, how do you regard the situation with the NexPress 2100?
Venkat Purushotham: At present, short-run and quick-turn applications are the very important sources of volume for the NexPress 2100. It is a proven fact that job runs lengths have been decreasing for years, even as print volumes have continued to grow. This is a phenomenon that will con- tinue in the foreseeable future, because information is being superseded at increasingly faster rates. As a result the need for new versions with shorter run lengths is growing. The advantages to the end-user are clear - no waste on out-of-date brochures and little to no storage costs associated with warehousing. The NexPress 2100 also enables print providers to deliver jobs that they never could have done in the past. If a print buyer needs a brochure tomorrow, the NexPress 2100 allows the printer to satisfy the customer’s need and thus build loyalty for the printer service provider. Finally, the future will belong increasingly to variable data printing that adds greater value to printed pieces by treating the recipients of printed pieces like the individuals that they are. Marketers are increasingly realizing the value of variable data printing and we expect demand to grow as technology simplifies the process for creating these pieces.
Mr. Purushotham, what growth figures do you predict for digital color printing, and what is your assessment of the market overall?
Venkat Purushotham: Various studies affirm that the digital color printing sector is expected to grow at a rate of 18 percent per year and the black- and-white sector at 11 percent. However, we believe that with the contin- ued advances in digital and information technology, the market can grow at even higher compound annual growth rates. This makes digital color printing the fastest-growing area of the graphic arts industry. These tremendous growth rates are due to the trend towards ever-shorter job runs, as already mentioned, and to the increasing role of one-to-one marketing and the use of variable data printing.
That all sounds highly optimistic. So are we to assume that NexPress is already working hard on the development of further innovations?
Venkat Purushotham: At Print01 in Chicago, we officially launched sales of the NexPress 2100 after just four years in the development stage. At this trade show alone, Heidelberg sold more than 70 presses. The orders we have received since last September also match our predictions. At IPEX in Birmingham, we will be unveiling NexTreme - a hugely important component for variable data printing and thus for efficient one-to-one marketing. And you can rest assured that NexPress has plenty of other ideas in the pipeline. The market is continuing to develop in a very dynamic way, and we’re looking to play a key role in shaping this development. NexPress products - and ultimately an entire product range - are just a logical conse- quence of this.
Mr. Pfizenmaier, what role do you see Digital Finishing playing in the future?
Wolfgang Pfizenmaier: Here too, development is still in its early stages. The best solution always depends on the application. In the black/white sector, we’re building up excellent experience with inline finishing solutions. That’s why Heidelberg will also be launching the inline Hole Puncher 9110 for the Digimaster 9110 at CeBIT. The popularity of inline finishing is mainly due to the high proportion of standardized print products in this sector. In the color sector, things are a bit different. Here, the tendency is more to- wards nearline finishing, since some of the print products place very dif- ferent demands on the finishing process. We understand nearline finishing as the immediate folding, cutting, stitching and gluing of print products that come out of the NexPress ready-collated and dry. Heidelberg’s Bindexpert is therefore an excellent add-on to the NexPress. It is ideal for adhesive bindings on small job runs and, just like the NexPress, can handle very different grades of paper.
And to finish, a word on the costs associated with color digital printing. What sort of development can the market expect in terms of production costs?
Venkat Purushotham: One of the catalysts for the sustained growth of digital printing is the economics of digital printing versus offset. As digital printing volume grows, economies of scale are augmented by technological breakthroughs that will continue to drive the cost of digital printing down significantly. However, the printing cost of a digitally printed color page is a many-faceted issue. And it is actually more complex than some suppliers continue to maintain. To simply name a unit page price would be pointless, since the actual costs are comprised of various components. For example the monthly print volume, the average ink coverage and of course the care with which the press is looked after and maintained. Only by taking account of all these factors can you come up with meaningful figures. NexPress recently published a white paper on the subject of “real costs in color digital printing”. It discusses in detail all the relevant factors (see
www.nexpress.com
, press center). Printing costs are of course a very important factor, but more important is the profits that can be earned with individual print jobs.
Wolfgang Pfizenmaier: Digital printing enables new applications to be offered that until now had been impossible for offset printing due to financial reasons. Whether it’s small job runs, fast turnaround of print jobs or variable data printing for the increasingly significant one-to-one marketing sector, we offer applications for every scenario. And print job customers know that these applications create more added value than just putting ink on paper. It is the role of the print service provider to sell this added value. Potential NexPress clients can rely on the fact that we discuss the subject of printing costs individually with them, set in the context of their business model.
Résumé:
Wolfgang Pfizenmaier
President, Heidelberg Digital LLC, Rochester
Member of the Board, Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG
Wolfgang Pfizenmaier, President, Heidelberg Digital LLC and Management Board Member for Digital Print Solutions, Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG, joined Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG in 1974, where he started out as a design engineer for sheetfed presses. His responsibilities expanded over the years, and in 1986 he was named a Member of the company’s Management Board. His roles within the Management Board included leadership of research and development, manufacturing and production, and Chairmanship of Heidelberg Web Press (formerly Heidelberg Harris).
In 1997, Mr. Pfizenmaier became the Management Board Member for Technology. He was also appointed President of Heidelberg Digital LLC, Rochester, and Chairman of the Board of Directors at NexPress Solutions LLC, Heidelberg’s joint venture with Eastman Kodak Company, formed in 1998 to develop and market new solutions for digital production color printing. Further, following Heidelberg’s recent organizational restructuring, he assumed responsibility for the Digital Print Solution Center and is in charge of the development, production and marketing of Heidelberg’s digital black & white and digital color business.
Throughout his career, Mr. Pfizenmaier has brought new technologies to fruition; he is currently leading Heidelberg into the digital printing marketplace of the 21st century.
Born in Germany, Wolfgang Pfizenmaier holds a Masters degree in Mechanical Engineering from Darmstadt University.
Venkat Purushotham
President, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), NexPress Solutions LLC
Venkat Purushotham, President NexPress Solutions LLC, started his career as a young entrepreneur in the printing industry. Between 1970 and 1976, he established three small businesses providing printing and prepress services.
Mr. Purushotham joined Kodak in 1981 as a Research Scientist at the Kodak Research Laboratories. His major focus of research was the application of low-cost, infrared laser diodes for digital output in prepress applications. In 1988, he became Program Manager in Kodak’s Graphics Imaging Systems Division, and was responsible for the development and global marketing of a vast array of prepress products and systems. Just three years later, he was appointed General Manager of Digital Publishing Solutions for graphics markets, responsible for commercializing various Kodak digital storage and distribution solutions in the prepress markets.
In 1994, Mr. Purushotham became General Manager, Digital & Hybrid Imaging and was responsible for business on graphics markets. In this role, he was responsible for developing and implementing Kodak’s thermal imaging solutions strategy for computer to film, proof and plates.
In 1996, he was appointed General Manager of Digital Printing Systems’ strategic business unit and Vice President, Kodak Professional. In this capacity, he was responsible for strategy, new business and strategic partnership development.
In 1998 Mr. Purushotham was appointed President, NexPress Solutions LLC, a new joint venture company formed between Eastman Kodak Company and Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG.
Mr. Purushotham has received various degrees in India, England and the USA, including an M.S. degree in imaging science from the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT).
For further information:
Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG
Matthias Hartung
Tel.: +49 (0)6221 92 50 77
Fax: +49 (0)6221 92 50 46
E-mail:
matthias.hartung@heidelberg.com
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