As I have grown older, I rarely have a difficult purchasing decision to make; over the years, I have accumulated most of the things that makes a life comfortable, and of course, a lot of things that serve no purpose whatsoever.
Yet I am not immune to having purchasing decisions requiring considerable thought and input. Two recent purchases stand out. To make my point one is simplistic, the other complex. Choosing a new vacuum cleaner, a simple and easy one that, cordless with a rechargeable battery driving a powerful electric motor got the vote.
The second decision encapsulated today’s media market scene in perfect microcosm: the black inkjet head on my desktop printer had begun to fail. It seemed initially the ink had run out; so I installed a new black cartridge. But it quickly became obvious this wasn’t the solution and a veritable Pandora’s box of questions immediately sprung forth. Do I replace the printer with a new one, and if so what model should I chose; what criteria do I require to make a sensible choice and so on? The questions didn’t filter down to: “was one type of printer better than another” as all choices seemed ‘fit for purpose’.
The stumbling point in the decision making process was one all of us face who work in print and media distribution. Not only are our business needs changing constantly, so are the methods available to actually carry out the tasks we set ourselves. Producing photo books takes up a great deal of the time, which I once devoted to writing lengthy and many would say over wordy articles.
What is now relevant for most of us involved in print production of any kind is not so much the print process, but the type of ink, toner or imaging system used to create the print and how the media being processed is converted to the final product.
I have been in the print industry for around 50 years and so I had a good knowledge of what I was after when my print head failed. I wanted inks that were lightfast with good colour acuity, dried quickly and were consistent from cartridge to cartridge. LED cured UV based inks certainly present considerable advantages in a wide range of applications, particularly work requiring inline finishing and converting across a wide range of materials.
LED inks, in my particular case, would have been an overkill solution; so I didn’t consider it, but what if it could have done – where would I have gone to get unbiased, well-balanced and rational advice?
Obviously a manufacturer and supplier would be an early port of call, but how do you solve the dilemma of whether the advice provided is free from prejudice or self interest. Articles in trade magazines like ME Printer clearly have a role to play and national industry federations such as the British Printing Industries Federation (BPIF) or its German equivalent (BVDM) could be another port of call, but there always seems to be some crucial element missing when it comes to making a major new investment decision.
This crucial element is how to easily locate comparative performance data, independently compiled, diverse in its style and in an accessible structure. The car emission scandal demonstrated how good data retrieval was used for bad ends but its existence at least was there; however, print data while available is often fragmented. Perhaps management information systems (MIS) providers could pool meaningful and useful data and offer access available for all. Also, the various national bodies may have a role to play in creating an overriding umbrella organisation to compile such data. Surely the industry would benefit over all with this new openness approach. After all if you measure something, you can improve on it.
