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Show of a Thousand Small Things

October 30, 2008 Top questions at Graph Expo: 
Can I retrofit that? 
Can I get it used? 
Can you finance it? 
This was the show of a thousand small solutions to everyday problems. It was also a show at which major industry suppliers adopted a leadership role. They will take the management chops they've developed to redirect themselves for where our industry is headed, and apply this to consultancy (manroland printadvice, Heidelberg Business Development Audit) for printing industry customers.
In many ways, though, the show was less about grand solutions and more about granular refinements in process: Envelope feeders for variable digital printing devices (MGI, Secap, Xante, Rena), trainable offset presses (Komori AI), machine-prompted operator makeready (Heidelberg Intellistart), intelligence in presses (Mitsubishi Color Navigator) and folders (Duplo, Standard Finishing, Baum, MBO).
With the sophisticated marketing machines, established industry vendors have been channeling information since January in advance of drupa. The usual (and a few unusual) suspects can be found in the Must See 'ems winners. 
Other offerings sometimes slipped upder the radar, or weren't so obvious for their winning ways within the Must See 'ems: Joseph Schulz closed-loop color, retrofittable to most offset presses; Color Control Network,  Controls Group Inc., with its digital inker retrofits. 
There's much m\uch more to tell, and we'll never get all of it down. But check
www.graphicartsonline.com/graphexpo for more.

Posted by Bill Esler on October 30, 2008 | Comments (0)