August 22, 2023
Practical Advice for Prepress Automation in L&P
Every label and packaging press has unique characteristics that influence your prepress toolkit. Read this before you build your shopping list for LabelExpo.
Pat is a well-known evangelist for inkjet productivity. At McGrew Group, she uses her decades technical and marketing experience to lead the industry toward optimized business processes and production workflows. She has helped companies to define their five-year plans, audited workflow processes, and developed sales team interventions and education programs. Pat is the Co-Author of 8 industry books, editor of A Guide to the Electronic Document Body of Knowledge, and a regular contributor to Inkjet Insight and WhatTheyThink.com.
Please offer your feedback on Pat's posts and inquire about availability for speaking or consulting using our contact form and we will put you in touch.
August 3, 2023
It’s Time for Web-to-Pack Enabled by Inkjet!
Web-to-pack requires an expanded definition of the key processes that ensure the ability to run at capacity, especially when integrating inkjet into the process.
July 26, 2023
It’s Fun to Play with the T-C-O-P!
Printers! There’s a thing you should know! I said, Printers! To keep track of your dough! You can make more, and I’m sure you will do
what you need to increase revenue! (sung to YMCA!)
June 27, 2023
Tool Time Versus Club Med
Part of your business strategy is how you manage your labor. You look at the tasks and roles and what level of expertise you need in the person assigned. For maintenance operations, when you deploy team members and when you take advantage of maintenance programs offered by the vendors requires a careful look at your options.
June 13, 2023
We All Live in a Maintenance World
Every print shop, regardless of the technologies used, should have a maintenance strategy. For many, self-maintenance is an attractive approach. Successful self-maintenance should consider more than just the cost of a full-service contract, however. Here are some considerations so you can make the best decisions!
May 23, 2023
Data, Data, Everywhere! But…
Every business has data. CCM specialists, print specialists, and multi-channel producers have data coming out of their ears. There is customer data, job data, inventory data, machine data, color data, financial data. Oh my! All the data impacts your ability to produce the work. Get control of the data to improve processes, become more efficient, and drive more profit!
May 9, 2023
Adding sustainability to your inkjet story
There are good reasons to add a sustainability tier to your inkjet story. Your customers may be asking about the actions you take to be a company that embraces sustainable practices. You may be asked to define your practices as part of a Request for Quote response. No matter your reason for investigating how to add sustainability for your story, here are some ways to proceed.
April 19, 2023
Integrating the Language of Sustainability
If your customers are asking about your sustainability strategy, how do you respond? How do you figure out what they are asking? There is an answer! Using the jargon reference built by the UN Global Compact for their Sustainability Development Goals you can sync to the global talk track, lift your visibility, and help your customers do the same!
April 13, 2023
Building your sustainability baseline
We use the word sustainability to mean many different things. For some it’s a business proposition. For others it is part of a wide-ranging discussion that involves every element of product production. For others it’s only a talk track. But sustainability can be a part of every printer’s talk track if they understand the language that maps practices to a set of UN-sponsored principles to guide strategies and operations.
March 22, 2023
Making Money: Profit Takes More than Revenue
Controlling costs is essential to any business, but there is more to ending the year profitably. Find the data that can help you make the best decisions about what products to offer in the markets you serve, and then review a key set of performance indicators regularly.
February 16, 2023
3 Inkjet Workflow Pain Points – 1 Answer Part 2
In Part 2 the focus turns to Paper and Capital Investments. In the world of inkjet, these are essential elements to understand and control. Let’s reduce the friction to allow the inkjet devices to be as productive as possible. Leverage your data to make good decisions.
February 8, 2023
3 Inkjet Workflow Pain Points, 1 Answer – Part 1
In this series we look at three of the top inkjet workflow pain points and paths to reducing the friction they cause with one technique that pays off. It starts with data but doesn’t end there. Data requires analysis and interpretation.
January 19, 2023
Web-to-print is vital to inkjet: buy or build?
No two print operations are identical. Equipment mixes, selling cultures, customers and products all vary from site to site. With so much variation in business processes, when should inkjet producers buy their essential web-to-print or digital storefront solution off-the-shelf and when is the best path a customized solution? It starts with an assessment!
January 3, 2023
Paper is Not an Inkjet Problem
Paper is not an inkjet problem. It is an industry problem. Smart printers will constantly be forecasting their paper needs and looking for multiple supply channels to ensure they can meet their clients demands.
December 21, 2022
Three transition trends for 2023
Did your business change over the last couple of years? What have you done to cope? Did you hire new people, add automation to workflows, buy a company, sell a pieces of business, or find new ways to navigate supply chain issues? If any of these items look familiar, you are on the same ride as most of your peers. Let’s find the learnings to get ready for 2023.
November 30, 2022
Wide Format Applications that Cross the Chasm
No matter what size or style production inkjet machine you have, if you want to expand your revenue streams into wide format, what you have may get you there.
November 9, 2022
Wide Format Crossover Options in Inkjet
Traditionally, we think of wide-format as the home of popular roll and sheet-fed devices that have inkjet print heads mounted on rails, scanning back and forth across the substrate to build up the image.
October 20, 2022
Production Inkjet Shopping Guide 2 – The Big Rigs
The latest high-productivity presses producing over 2,500 images per minute. Check out the next inkjet shopping guide.
October 12, 2022
What Do We Mean by Inkjet Productivity?
We talk about inkjet productivity as though one size fits all, but in practice it is a function of what you need. And we all need different things. Consider the differences between industrial and production productivity and review our checklist for assessing what you need.
September 28, 2022
What Support Should You Expect When You DIY Inkjet?
In the last episode, we recommended that before you begin a DIY inkjet project, a best practice is to define your needs and establish your expertise levels concerning the elements
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