The Bindery—No Longer the Bottleneck of the Printers’ Workflow

In order to get a clearer picture of the atti-tudes of printers about the bindery, the Print Industries Market Information and Research organization (PRIMIR) commissioned State Street Consultants and Larry Tanowitz to do an update of the 1996 NPES study. The new study entitled The Market Potential and Installed Base for Traditional Bindery/Finishing Technologies analyzes the same forces that transformed pre-press and press rooms over the last decade and are now reshaping the tradi-tional bindery. This study profiles the North American installed base of in-line and off-line production bindery/finishing equipment by type, format (size), cycle speed, age, market, and shop size, to characterize the status of the current bindery, broken out by in-plant, production digital printer, commercial printer and trade bindery. The study also addresses barriers and drivers for bindery investment decisions including automation, JDF readiness, and CIP4, among others. The study also identifies bindery areas where printers still depend upon manual hand-labor operations, and areas in greatest need for automation. So what are some of the major findings?