The Industrialization of Print

The printing industry is in the midst of an evolution. In the centuries since the press was first invented, printing was an art. Pieces were created by skilled craftsmen who could take the imagination of their clients and turn it into a reality. Even through the Industrial Revolution, when so many skills were distilled down to their essence to create reliable and repeatable processes, print held out. It got faster and more efficient, but the concept of print as the work of a craftsman persisted.

Print, however, is now starting to see a faster shift toward a more industrial approach.

As the technology of putting ink on a substrate has changed and evolved, machines that can produce high-quality work hit the market for far less than the millions an offset press used to cost. Suddenly, the barrier to entry in the print industry started dropping, allowing more competition. When someone looks back at the industry in another 100 years, they will probably say this was when the tipping point started to happen, as shops were forced to find leaner, more efficient ways to operate in order to stay competitive, while at the same time looking for new ways to be innovative to win jobs.

And it’s not just the need to be more efficient to stay competitive that is driving this shift, either. Manufacturers of a wide range of goods are continuing their own push toward faster, more innovative and more efficient systems. For printers, this means more of the work will start to move upstream, into the manufacturing line itself, becoming just another station in the factory, rather than a wholly separate process.

“Industrial print means that is used within the manufacturing process,” said Frazer Chesterman, co-founder and director of InPrint. “So whereby ink or another substance is printed onto a product for either functional or decorative purposes. Unlike conventional document or graphic printing, which is used mainly for promotional purposes, industrial print is deployed on the production line itself.”

Andy Rae, the senior vice president of Equipment & Marketing for Heidelberg Americas, put it fairly succinctly. He noted that when it comes to industrial printing, there are two main paths: “Printing as part of a manufacturing process (e.g. computer keyboards or crash helmets.) And printing being viewed as an industrial manufacturing process in its own right (e.g likened to a car manufacturing process.)”

“For us, industrial printing means printing is integrated into the manufacturing lines to assist the function, decoration or manufacturing of devices,” agreed Tom Cloots, industrial print marketing manager, Agfa Graphics. He went on to note that much of it comes down to the inks — high performance inks, usually UV, are needed to print directly onto many of the items rolling off of production lines, including everything from shampoo bottles to car parts. There is a bit more leeway when printing onto a label stock that is later applied to the bottle; when printing direct, you only get one shot to get it right.

The senior product manager, RFID and Industrial Printers for Zebra Technologies, Michael Fein, noted that, “Industrial print is a segment of products and solutions that are classified for mission critical applications in the manufacturer and transportation of items. The industrial aspect is the durability, longevity and reliability needed. You can label anything from the item itself, to the case, to an asset, and anything in between.”

“We are seeing a move to printing on completed items rather than just as part of the process,” agreed Rae.

The range of applications is already fairly large, and continuing to grow. Chesterman noted that it goes from, “functional screen printing that enables a smartphone to work, to individually printed packaging, to decorative print onto various surfaces such as glass, metal or wood. Special technologies such as 3D print are used by industrial designers for prototyping, or to generate tailor-made packaging for fragile goods.”

Industrial printing isn’t just about printing the labels directly onto the items either, although that is certainly a large part of the segment — an InPrint Survey done in January 2016 suggested that packaging currently makes up about 60% of the industrial print market. It is also about giving that item a unique identification. “At its basic level think of printing business giving things an ID,” said Fein. “That’s asset intelligence, and the corporate vision is enterprise-level asset intelligence. At its most basic form is a label, which could include an image, logo or barcode. There could even be an RFID component.”

He believes this is only the start though. As the industrialization of the print process continues, it will become a fundamental part of the manufacturing line — if the printer goes down, it would stop the entire operation. And he sees the trend moving more toward a more intelligent form of asset intelligence, with RFID technology becoming more of a critical component. “RFIDS is very much going to expand industrial print applications,” Fein said. “It just provides another layer. I think most of the RFID applications we’re seeing gain traction and grow are cases where it augments existing label or barcode. In the past, the label was meant to be temporary — stick it on and when the consumer throws it away the id gets lost. RFID changes that dynamic and gives the label intelligence, so it’s used throughout the lifecycle.”

One example he gave of RFID changing the way we print and manage labels is in the automotive industry. Think about recalls — right now, a part number is put on each component, and in a recall, a dealer or service manager would have to open up the vehicle to see if they had one of the parts with the faulty serial number. With RFID labels, however, they could simply scan the car and get a full list of every part, along with where and when it was made, allowing them to very quickly know exactly what they are working with. Cars that don’t have the faulty parts don’t need to spend hours or days being taken apart to check, freeing up time and money across the board. And this is just one example.

“Printing with inks that can transfer electronic signals offers incredible advancements in the production process,” agreed Cloots. “For example, in ‘smart packaging’ an antenna can be printed as part of the product package decoration. Where object printing is concerned (and we explicitly exclude the 3D printing industry for creating 3D objects), the same applies. The functional or decorative printing of an object drastically simplifies the process to create, manufacture and store rich variations of the same or similar product. These capabilities are revolutionizing the manufacturing process.”

Beyond high-tech items and processes, textiles and décor items are also major growth areas in the overall industrial category that printers should be taking a closer look at, said Chesterman. “We asked the market what they thought the key areas of development would be. Of course the textile sector is experiencing strong growth for digital textile printing, which came second highest after packaging. However perhaps as exciting as textiles is the high level of respondents who believed that interior decor onto new surfaces with (47.79%) are set to make considerable gains and this came in third. This is supported by the growth in decor printing particularly evident at InPrint in Europe and we expect similar results in the US.”

A Path Forward

For traditional printers, the push toward making print part of the manufacturing process, rather than another stop, doesn’t mean walking away from the business. There is still a huge need for print — even in the industrial segment — and there are a few tips to keep in mind.

“Industrial manufacturers will eventually invest in inline inkjet printing solutions. Print gets ‘insourced’ and will be integrated in the manufacturing line,” said Cloots. “However, this will happen over time. Printers supplying the industry today must focus on the latest innovations and partner with a technology supplier with extensive knowledge and expertise in chemistry, color management and dispersion technology. The only way to stay ahead of the game is to continuously invest in the newest technologies.”

One key point that Chesterman made is that the push for technology is coming from all sides, not just from a few print buyers or companies who are at the bleeding edge of innovation. “We recently held an InPrint Advisory group with around 25 US and European companies. The group provided some excellent insight and it was clear from both our research and the feedback from US companies already in the market is that the ‘end users’ are driving the interest in the US in Inkjet for industrial print applications. As you would expect, the drivers for change are slightly different between Europe and the US. In Europe there seems to be both ‘consumer pull and technology push’ at play, whereas in the US — which is a major technology production center — the pull is coming from companies such as Boeing, GM, Apple, and Nike. It is clear from the insight and feedback in the room that literally teams of R&D people from some of the world’s most innovative companies are being set the task of investigating ‘How can inkjet add value to our production’?”

“Anything that disrupts the current thinking can be an opportunity to profit for an entrepreneur,” agreed Rae. “4D printing as part of a manufacturing process is very interesting from that viewpoint, and will appeal directly to the brands. On the industrialized manufacturing side, software-driven, closed-loop control systems will become used more and more, just like any other industry with large scale, high volume cost per piece output.”

It’s not just about the technology, however. Printers can also add value to their operations and become more of a trusted partner if they are perceived as experts, rather than vendors. “Where organizations provide value isn’t’ necessarily technology, it’s being the expert at integrating that system into the manufacturing system,” stressed Fein. “Knowing what label goes on which type of product, for example. And it’s not as much knowing the technology, but knowing their customers intimately, and the differences between them. For example, logistics, aerospace and automotive have different needs. Pick a vertical, a use case, and become an expert at it.”

Printers who can walk in and provide the knowledge and expertise about what types of inks work best for the specific application, or how new technologies like RFID work and can benefit the manufacturer will find themselves in a much better position to continue to evolve along with the market. There will always be a need for the craftsmanship side of printing; applications that require that level of skill and creativity aren’t going to simply disappear. But they will become a smaller segment of the available work. Printers who push themselves to stay ahead of the technology curve, focusing on new ways to run faster and more efficiently, will be the profit leaders of tomorrow. The industrialization of print has already started, and the trend is only going to continue.