Print on Demand

Paper has a long history, beginning with the ancient Chinese and con tinuing

to the present day. After hand-made methods dominated for thousands of years,

paper production became industrialized during the 19th century. Thereafter the

20th century saw the birth of offset printing a technique largely responsible

for the high growth this industry has seen.

Nitin Hiranandani "Will digital processing replace the offset? The answer is straight–many factors including consumer preferences will determine the final outcome"

While all these advances in technology were being made a revolution was

unfolding in the background–the PC. The blossoming of the PC into an industry

acted as a catalyst for what today is called desktop publishing, which leverages

the same concept of good quality printing at affordable rates. As the PC

industry started getting popular word and prohibitive costs of offset publishing

gave birth to what is known as desktop printing. As the Industrial Revolution

progressed, the need for organized information that could be retrieved and

published was felt. This need gave birth to newer techniques namely photocopying

and offset printing. Although these techniques were good and solved some of the

cumbersome aspects they were not really the low cost mass production and high

quality solutions which were the need of the day. As technologies advanced and

requirements for small quantity cheap printing evolved equipment and many

imaging and printing companies R&D efforts gave birth to what is now being

popularly termed as "Print-On-Demand". Although offset is well suited

for large print orders in today’s competitive world this can be a disadvantage

both from an agility as well as storage inventory perspective. But as industry

and commerce developed, demand for printed infoermation increased enormously

thus prompting the need for better printing techniques. Subsequent inventions

like the photocopier gave birth to a new terminology called reprography–a

collective name for different processes of duplication and reproduction of

documents. By eliminating the prepress, plate making, make readies, on demand is

not trying to capture the offset market but is trying to carve a niche for

itself.

Deciding what to use when



The crucial questions, however, remain that "will digital processing in

on-demand printing replace the offset"? The answer–a combination of

factors including consumer preferences will decide the outcome of the race among

the two technologies. The main advantage of on-demand printing is being able to

print what you need when you need it. While it is generally been expected that

On Demand Printing is a good substitute for high cost offset quality without

sacrificing too much of quality more and more enterprises are moving towards

this method of printing in the hope of giving a good quality, personalized print

job. While changes in laser technology and increased adoption of the Internet

will surely drive the adoption of this concept more and more print jobs are

going the demand way!

The author is country commercial category manager, Imaging and Printing

Group, Hewlett-Packard India.