The Digital Bindery

"Immediate time to market means little or no 'shelf' quantities of stocks," Bice relates. "Everything must be printed in real time. It also means that we cannot print short run just in time. Each document, including prospectuses, needs to be printed for a specific customer in a specific sequence."

According to Jim Countryman, vice president and plant manager of Orange, CA-based Experian, the firm's Commercial Print Division serves a market that is presently experiencing a decline in the number of volumes printed. A majority of Experian's customers in that market are reference publications—a seemingly easy target for replacement by electronic media—but Countryman points out there is still sound demand for printed versions.