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Wednesday, November 27, 2002
Freight Management for Demand-driven Print
Printable.com is the first print e-procurement service to incorporate sophisticated rate shopping software into its hosted software bundle. Logistics management has been one of the missing links in the development of demand-driven print models. With the these services becoming available to all of Printable's ASP customers the reality of broad-based, demand-driven print gets closer.
Printable Technologies Inc. Licenses Invenix Freight Management Software[...] The Invenix Freight Management software calculates an order's real-time shipping costs by performing order cubing, box selection, weight calculations, and shipper rate calculations using both parcel and LTL carriers. The solution licensed by Printable includes the printed products configurator, which calculates volume and weight for printed items based on quantity, product dimensions, paper weight, and other job specifications including folding, binding, and shrinkwrapping. [...] [WhatTheyThink]
Friday, August 2, 2002
August Print Industry Roundup
(Editor's note: this post has been re-titled, edited for clarity, and extended since it was originally posted. The original title "Road Trip" was ambiguous and the content contained some errors -- Ed.)I've been traveling quite a bit this week and haven't had time to post but I have been keeping up with the news. Several interesting things have happened while I was on the road.
National Association for Printing Leadership (NAPL) reported business in the commercial print sector has hit a five-month low at 45.5. This is the second consecutive decline and the second consecutive sub-50 month. NAPL cautions this is not an indication the industry is going back into recession. NAPL tracks a lot of industry statistics, and I need to check into this because I don't know what they saw that indicated the industry was ever coming out of recession.
ImageX licensed three of their patents to printChannel. This is an interesting move in the overall landscape of printing process patents. I have written about this before and have serious doubts about the viability and enforceability of many of the recently-issued process patents for online printing companies. At best these patents are a stretch. At worst they're outright fraud.
I have reviewed the printChannel offering and met previously with the management team there. It's difficult to believe they would gain anything useful from this license, so the motive is likely defensive -- to avoid wasting vital capital in useless legal wrangling. Virtually all the print e-procurement companies are struggling, and wasteful patent litigation is the last thing any of them they need.
But printChannel's signing with Imagex could establish precedent that there is market value to the patent and allow the company to take its lawsuit business model to larger players. This is something to watch. (Editor's note: Soon after this piece was written printChannel announced they would cease operations and in November 2002 was acquired by Printcafe. In May 2003 ImageX, teetering on its own bankruptcy, was acquired by Kinko's for $15 million -- Ed.)
Kinko's is rebuilding in Dallas. The company continues to rebuild itself in the DFW area after installing a new CEO and shuttering its SoCal HQ. Gary Kusin, the new CEO, came from the office furniture industry. Sue Parks, recently named exec-VP of Ops, came from Gateway Computers and USWest. I'm told there are lots of ads in the DFW papers for programmers, engineers, etc at Kinko's. Should be interesting to see what happens there over the next year. It is not easy to rebuild an entire company in a new city.
Friday, July 19, 2002
Printcafe Scheduler
I believe this refers to the latest release of what used to be Kerens, a print scheduling system based on Eli Goldratt's Theory of Constraints.
Printcafe Shows New PrintFlow, PrinterSite Internal & Logic Upgrade at Conference
"PrintFlow is an amazing new technology," said Doug Ehmann, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of The Sheridan Group, a large publication printer. "It?s fast and can consider many more constraints and options than is humanly possible. We investigated other technologies to help us with scheduling, but none could manage in real-time our complex and critical processes." [WhatTheyThink]
While this product is not particularly suited to digital or demand-driven print operations, it is encouraging to see Theory of Constraints being applied in printing. TOC principles, along with such ideas as single-unit-flow and cellular manufacturing, are critical to efficient demand-driven operations.
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