manroland introduces PRINTVALUE at successful Graph Expo 2008

Printers from around North America visited the manroland booth at Graph Expo 2008 in Chicago.  The warm late fall days increased the pace of the show which was much busier than expected.  “I’ve had meetings every hour!”, said Mr. Paul Steidle, Board Member, Web at manroland. 

Salespeople and printers met in the open areas of the manroland booth, at the demo stations and in the conference suites.  Dominating the booth was the tall video wall that played customer testimonials about manroland presses, services and ancillary products.

The manroland booth theme for this show was similar to that of the Drupa show in the spring.  Graph Expo ’08 was the North American launch of the new manroland brand and the launch of the PRINTVALUE group of products and services.  The four components of PRINTVALUE: printcom, printservices, printnet and printadvice were featured in an open configuration of walls and demo equipment. printcom is the set of tested and certified process-compliant pressroom system components that optimize the complete printing process.  Over the entire life cycle of the press, printservices offers a complete 360º service portfolio ranging from project management to classic repair and through to process optimization.  A network architecture that makes room for new print jobs, printnet offers individual solutions from complete networking stepwise in the directon fo full automation. Because decisions for the future are made in the present, printadvice is the umbrella covering the full range of consultancy services for sheetfed and web printers.  Visitors could take a guided tour through the booth to get an overview of PRINTVALUE and Training.

A small classroom was set-up in one area of the booth for visitors to get a sample of manroland training classes.  Visitors could attend an instructor-led session on ink fountains, PECOM, color management and knife box installation or experience a self-paced e-training course from a live instructor via the internet.

The video wall played customer testimonials from sheetfed and web customers in a variety of segments.  The two on-demand video screens were in constant use as visitors selected videos discussing  PRINTVALUE and manroland customers. Visitors could choose from 5 customer testimonials.  The Schawk video discussed large format, Telepresence and PRINTVALUE.  Managers from Metropolitan Fine Printing described the flexibility and high quality of manroland presses.  Large format printing and UV were the topics in the Strine Printing video.  The operations team at the Indianapolis Star newspaper complimented manroland for its performance on two web-width reductions.  Finally, the executive team at Transcontinental talked about their relationship with manroland and new presses for its expansion.  These videos and more can be viewed on the manroland website at Products/Sheetfed/SuccessStories.

A thermal imaging station showed visitors how a manroland technician can identify and diagnose potential wear areas on a press.  Each component of the press has a unique heat signature that can be analyzed with the high-resolution infrared camera.  Presses should be checked regularly throughout their lifecycle to keep them running smoothly.

According to Jon Surch, VP, Sheetfed Service Operations, “This year’s show provided us a chance to bring our support message to printers at a time when optimizing press production is paramount in their business.”

At its Westmont facility before show hours, manroland press demonstrations were crowded with printers interested in the R900 large format capabilities.  Several forms were run in quick succession showing the fast-makeready for this highly productive press.  After the breakfast demos, attendees were shuttled back to Graph Expo right as the show opened.

Overall, print executives showed much more interest in capital investment that had been expected for this show.  “This has been a successful show for manroland”, said Al Reijmer, VP Sales Western Region, “our appointment calendars are full with follow-up visits!”