Top Priorities
Top Priorities
What are your top priorities?
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Holding a lesser, but still significant degree of importance: machinery upgrades at 35 percent, future-proofing production at 15 percent and reducing the plant’s carbon footprint at 12 percent. Rounding out the list of likely actions are further development of hybrid print capabilities at 11 percent and application of Industry 4.0/Packaging 4.0 at 8 percent.
Ever Efficient
Which elements factor into efficiency improvement plans?
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They don’t stop there. Multiple moves, all of which are generally known to be subsets of the two major strategies, target efficiency, and they take place in every plant. “Trimming cost,” is a popular response, garnering 52 percent of votes. “Embracing automated intelligence,” comes in at nearly 30 percent and “digitizing workflow,” stands at 26 percent. Other targets for action include “holding color,” 21 percent and “conserving energy,” at 16 percent.
Printers explain, for the record:
- “Flexo is great, but more digital is to come”
- “Automation will continue at a rapid pace”
- “Digital will be even more prevalent going forward and more competitive with flexo and offset on larger runs”
- “We’re looking to refine where digital converting leverages improved efficiencies, add more automation to registration, tension and web controls, and schedule for ever better efficiencies”
- “Hybrid presses will continue to gain in popularity due to reduced waste and increased productivity”
- As a community, we’ll be watching the narrow web industry dominate package printing and converting. It comes down to profitability, smaller runs and digital technology—narrow web is where they converge”
- “Hybrid printing is the future, but raw material shortages are killing American industry”