Jim Harvey, Executive Director of CIP4, the JDF standards organization, talked about the benefits of print automation during a Seybold Report Webinar earlier this month. He caught everybody's attention when he remarked that 25% of printers in the United States make almost the majority of profits in the printing industry. Everybody else, it seems, is either making no profit or on their way out of business. He cited several Printing Industry of America studies as the source of his information.

The key to making those profits, he went on to say, is automation—and I believe him. Even if I hadn't, later in the presentation he presented the results of some recent CIP4 analysis of the return-on-investment automation with JDF have allowed some companies to make. Here are some of the findings:

• The average annualized ROI for all companies in the study for JDF-enabled integration is 298%.
• If the high (1338%) and low (19%) outliers are thrown out, the average ROI is 277%.
• The average labor savings per company is 6,979 hours per year. Using the study basis year, this number of hours translates into 3.5 employees or contract workers.

Automation works, and automation offers one of the best opportunities for graphic arts industry managers to reduce overhead and increase profits. The more work technology can do without intervention from human beings, the better the profit picture for any kind of graphic arts company—printing concern, prepress operation, or even a publishing company.

I am excited when I learn about how graphic arts vendors are making significant investments in creating technology that can reduce the time required to prepare a job for press, such as Enfocus is achieving with its Enfocus Switch solution. For example, PDF/VT, a new standard for PDF for variable data and personalized printing, will help automate a great deal of the work involved in creating complex personalized images and will even help speed up imposition of personalized documents. And, using PDF/VT will help speed up production of variable data jobs. Total implementation of the new standard is six to 18 months away, but printers and publishers need to be aware of the potential and start talking to their vendors about when tools will be ready.

Sometimes when people hear about automation efforts, they start to worry their own jobs might be at risk. It can be a legitimate concern, so managers need to be clear with employees what the results will be. If staffing levels need to be reduced, then automation can make it easier to accomplish this serious necessity. However, from what I have seen and heard, automation is used more often to reduce the amount of repetitive and uninteresting work that staffers have to accomplish, freeing them up to take on more complex and fulfilling work within the company. Automation, after all, can only do so much. Human beings are still a very necessary part of the process!

Graphic arts industry management and owners need to investigate how to employ automation strategies and technologies in every department. Doing so will help reduce overhead and improve profits, but it can also help them make the most of the capabilities and abilities of their staff. Overall, automation is key to building an efficient and profitable 21st century company.

By Molly Joss, Owner and Publisher of The Seybold Report