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.