We created a few Premier Print Awards videos to better showcase the effect that the competition can have on business. In the video below, we have past winners from Jostens and Hoechstetter discussing what winning a Benny Award means to them and how it has impacted their business.  Enjoy the video and if you have any questions about the Premier Print Awards ask them in the comments and we’ll be more than happy to answer...

The 2011 Continuous Improvement Conference recently came to a close (we’ll have a wrap-up of the conference coming soon!), and if you weren’t able to attend, don’t worry, we have you covered. We recorded a series of videos focusing on the fundamentals of continuous improvement and operational excellence. Embedded below, you’ll find videos that answer some of the basic questions like: How to budget for Lean transformation, why Lean, and what metrics need to be measured. Let us know what you think of the videos in the comments below.        ...

The 2011 Continuous Improvement Conference is happening right now in Kansas City, Missouri and if you couldn’t make it there year, fear not, there’s still learning to be had. We have a series of videos entitled “Ask Ken: Operational Excellence for Printers” that answer some of the fundamental questions about lean and operational excellence such as why use Lean and how to budget for Lean manufacturing. While it’s not the same as attending the conference, we hope you find them full of information. We’ve embeded the videos in this post so you can watch them at your leisure. Let us know what you think in the...

The Binding Industries Associaton Conference is coming up in May and we took the time to talk with past attendee Frank Shear, president, Seaboard Bindery, Inc., about his conference experience. Enjoy the brief interview and let us know what you think in the comments! Have you implemented anything you’ve learned from the BIA conference into your own work? Most definitely.    Much of what I take back with me results from conversations with people. I remember a discussion from one year about employee communication that resulted in me having monthly meetings with our employees to review what we have accomplished in the past month and discuss challenges and opportunities ahead.  Employees have told me they find value in those brief meetings. What were some of the takeaways from the conference? One part of the marketing session involved discussion of where social media marketing fits into the marketing mix.  We are now trying to implement a social media focus into our marketing. Last year there was a panel of print buyers discussing how binders can expand their reach into non-traditional customers.  We have implemented some of this here. Two years ago the seminar on mailing and fulfillment really excited me.  We started offering more fulfillment as part of our services, not to the degree of a specialty fulfillment house, but to give us added value. How useful were the tours? The tours are always eye opening.  There is always something that someone else does differently.  We all get to the same end point, but the paths there are always different.  You get to chat with operators, you get to watch jobs run, it’s a great time to pick the brains of others looking at the same process. New ideas pop up, the juices start flowing. Was it useful to share ideas with your peers? That is what the conference is all about.  The most effective learning for me comes with simply chatting with others. You might overhear someone talking about a problem that you are encountering, or a solution that they are implementing for a problem that you share.  Standing around and talking is perhaps one of the best opportunities to learn. What would you say to someone on the fence about attending the BIA Conference? One never knows what is likely to come up from a seminar or person to person discussion.  I have always had some issue in common with whomever I happened to be talking with.  One new idea or insight can be priceless....

It’s that time of the year again–we’re now accepting entries for the Premier Print Awards! This is a great time to be in the print industry because we get flooded with print pieces from all over the world. We see the pop-up books, all sorts of magazines, fascinating labels, and incredibly complex and detailed printed pieces. If you haven’t listened to this interview with Wyatt Hogue , vice president of Adams Lithographing, the Best of Show winner last year, it provides great insight for how important this award is for a company. Last year, I had the opportunity to cover the judging process. I wrote up a detailed post which you can find here . It was breathtaking to see a press room filled with print and I’m eager to see what sort of pieces we’ll see this...