manroland Inc.

IP Contest Winner Headed for VacationMEMPHIS, TN—International Paper Commercial Printing Papers has announced the winners of "The Best Ideas on Paper Sweepstakes," an online contest designed to encourage commercial printers to visit the company's Website, www.ipcommercialprinting.com. After 41 years of service with the Bobst Group, Joe Fuchs, vice president, has retired. Fuchs trained in Switzerland as a diecutter specialist before moving to the U.S. full-time in 1967. He was promoted to vice president in 1978, where he was responsible for directing the service activities for all Bobst products sold here. Georgia-Pacific has announced the appointment of Andrea Day as market manager

Purup-Eskofot announced that Jodi Gross has joined the company as marketing manager. Gross brings to the company nine years of sales and marketing experience in the graphic arts industry. MAN Roland has appointed William Ford sales manager for half-size and pre-owned sheetfed presses for its upper Midwest territory. Ford comes to MAN Roland after 17 years at Oxy-Dry. Also, Steven Baker has been appointed district sales manager for sheetfed presses for northern Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas. Baker, who has 34 years of experience in the printing industry, joins MAN Roland from Epic Products International. Douglas Zirkelbach has been appointed sales manager for half-size and

INDIANASYRACUSE, IN—The Image Group recently achieved its 100 millionth impression on one of its six-color Akiyama offset presses. The sheetfed press, shown here with Bob McKee (left) of Akiyama and James Plummer Sr., president and CEO of The Image Group, was installed in 1986. NEW YORKHENRIETTA, NY—Tucker Printers has installed a new Heidelberg Speedmaster CD-102-6+LX at its facility here. With the press are (from the left) Dan Tucker, president of Tucker Printers, and Whitey Link, sales representative for Heidelberg USA. ARKANSASSPRINGDALE—The Morning News has purchased a TECSA 2470 copydot scanner from Graphic Enterprises Inc. (GEI). CALIFORNIASAN Diego—Dam Bindery has installed a Minuteman saddle

BY CAROLINE MILLER In the realm of printing management systems, there's probably no hotter topic right now than printCafe and PrintTalk. The January 2000 announcement of the merger of nth degree software and Prograph to form printCafe, then the subsequent acquisitions of AHP, Hagen Systems, Logic Associates, M Data and Programmed Solutions left the industry confused, nervous and full of questions. That air of uncertainty was further fueled when, in June, the remaining MIS systems and 10 e-commerce companies announced the formation of the PrintTalk consortium. Both PrintTalk and printCafe made promises of seamless integration from the buyer to printer, but many in the

The Job Definition Format (JDF) has added a new vigor to the CIP3 movement—changing the consortium's name to CIP4, and forecasting a new era for CIM in an e-commerce and more automated printing industry. BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO When the CIP3 consortium was formed in 1995, the intent was clear: develop standards that would facilitate a completely automated and integrated printing process, from prepress to pressroom to postpress. Hence the name, CIP3—the International Cooperation for Integration of Prepress, Press and Postpress. Easy enough. The mission was embraced by dozens of technology providers. Together, companies from Heidelberg to Adobe, MAN Roland to Agfa, formulated a new format, known

BY ERIK CAGLE One by one, John Fosmire, president and CEO of Los Angeles-based Anderson Lithograph, clicked off the names of former commercial printing contemporaries who had sold their interests to industry consolidators. It was as dubious a list of names as the would-be survivors who had been voted off the island. "Other than our acquisition by Mail-Well, I can't name any high-end lithographer that increased sales or was a better company a year after being acquired," Fosmire remarks. "Maybe (name withheld to protect the guilty), but I don't think so." Fosmire, a 40-year printing veteran, rattles two more possible names off the top

BY ERIK CAGLE Aretha Franklin herself would have a tough time drumming up a little R-E-S-P-E-C-T for the coldset web offset press. While its heatset counterpart struts on by, wearing UV Ray Bans and leading the way as the prime choice for high-end, multi-color commercial work, the dryer-less stepchild ekes out a living churning out newspapers, direct mailers, promotional graphics and other types of printed communications, primarily on uncoated stocks. Even manufacturers and distributors of open-web presses believe the market for this type of machine has been declining in recent years, but it remains a viable, strong option in several print communications segments. Like

It is increasingly difficult to find major vendors that have not jumped onto the XML bandwagon. Adobe, Agfa, Heidelberg and MAN Roland have teamed up to develop the Job Definition Format (JDF) using XML, while CreoScitex and Quark are both building XML-based applications to drive their own systems. In the e-commerce space, printCafe, PrintTalk—a nascent group of firms—and others are building transaction and supply chain management systems based on eXtensible Markup Language. Not to be left out, the on-demand group PODI has published a specification called PPML—Personalized Print Markup Language—based on this spec, and still another industry initiative, called the Internet Printing Protocol (IPP),

Homespun color-managed workflows can save production time and consumables costs. The trick is finding the right set of technologies and practices that work best to meet the needs of your production schedule—and your clients. BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO Controlling the intricacies of color management and ICC profiling in any print production workflow is the equivalent of trying to control the weather and the tides—then reach a standard agreement on the color hues and tonal properties of both. Each printing operation has its own approach to managing color—its own method of predicting the tides, calculating varying weather patterns and pinpointing the color gamuts of each.

DUSSELDORF, GERMANY —With more than 450,000 visitors and more than 1,900 exhibitors, could any one, single event be more of a global measuring stick for technology trends and new directions for the printing industry than DRUPA 2000—a 14-day mega-event that took over this charming river city? On the technology for digital printing—the show's highlight—and digital prepress, DRUPA 2000 accomplished the following key objectives: * The global move toward accepted, viable on-press imaging and true production digital color presses—built for even the most traditional of commercial printing operations. Signalling a new direction for digital printing at DRUPA 2000, Presstek, supplying on-press