Lean manufacturing is a term often used in print production over recent years, but at leading carton supplier Benson Group they have gone one step further. The combination of Lean manufacturing with the Six Sigma approach creates Lean Sigma, and Benson Group is now some 12 months into a four year programme of implementation of Lean Sigma. The obvious highlight in the first year has been a double digit percentage growth in print production at the company’s flagship site in Bardon, Leicestershire.Another UK success for software supplier Wave2 with Newsquest (London) having implemented a self-service advertisement product across a number of its production sites, including the Bucks Free Press. The company’s AdMaker solution is based on Wave2’s AdPortal software.
As mentioned last week, Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin has launched edition one of its Project magazine for the iPad. PIND has, in the interest of the readership, stepped right in there and purchased the publication, and I have to say it is well worth the experience if you have an iPad. From the active front cover through to the excellent Kronenberg 1664 “ad” featuring no less than three video versions of Lemmy’s slow and easy Ace of Spades as heard on the TV ad, it’s an exciting digital experience. Room for improvement? Yes, sure, but this only issue one.Not sampled by PIND as yet, but Thursday also saw the launch of an app for Marie Claire magazine. The December edition is the first to get a bit of a digital “upgrade”, and whilst some older editions are available (July to November), they are basically just PDF’s, according to our friends at Mashable. The link offers a number of images of the new publication.
Providing a summary of the whole publishing situation right now, PPA has launched its own Future of Publishing web feature, offering a wide range of opinions. Both printers and publishers should read through these pages for further thoughts and insights into the world of publishing, and where digital devices might take the market.Closely allied to the above, InPublishing provides us with a take on the newspaper world. You might think you know the answer to the question posed in the title: “Why are Newspapers Disappearing?” The question of marketing is brought into the mix, making this piece a very worthwhile read.
Should book printers think we are ignoring their plight, fear not: we now focus on Google’s imminent on-line bookstore launch. Whilst the company has fiddled with free e-books in the past, Google Editions will be a far more focused attempt at winning some business from the likes of Amazon as well as creating new Christmas customers you suspect!We’ve been skirting around the tablet market with much of the above, so now let us focus squarely on the latest from that sector: Samsung is claiming that it has chalked up one million sales of its Galaxy Tab. It really is not that clear whether this means end user sales or sales to the distribution chain. My take is it’s the later. Don’t chalk me up as an “Apple fan-boy” but I am still of the opinion that the iPad is still way ahead of the Galaxy in terms of both value for money and sheer physical size!
Of general interest, a link to the BBC web site will give you an excellent insight into the growth of the internet across the world over the past 11 years. Some of the numbers are quite staggering, and I was particularly surprised to see that the UK has a higher percentage of the population online that the United States! The UK’s 83.5%, whilst extremely impressive, is still behind many of the Scandinavian countries, with Iceland, Norway and Sweden all boasting 90%+ broadband access.To close, just a reminder that you can link to a Printing Industry News Digest RSS feed to help you keep up with the latest news each week. This link can be used to add to your Google Reader list of feeds, or works well with the Pulse News Reader, which is now free to download for iPad. The PIND feed includes images.
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