Printing Industries of America has teamed up with Staples Advantage to offer an unbelievable cost‐saving program exclusively for its members through Printing Industries of America affiliates. With this Buying Program, your business is eligible to save on office products and more via the Staples Advantage program. This program allows you to leverage the Buying Program of all participating members through Printing Industries of America affiliates. Staples Advantage can help you reduce expenses through our competitive prices on more than 180,000 products available through the proprietary Order.StaplesAdvantage.com® website. The website allows you to place orders, track orders 24 hours a day, check product availability, review pricing, set up reusable shopping lists, and make returns. You can count on Staples to provide you with: Significant savings—an average of 55% off of list prices on office product purchases Online ordering, returns, and control on Order.StaplesAdvantage.com® Hassle-free 30-day return policy Ability to order by phone and fax FREE Next-Day Delivery on minimum orders of $30 Reporting capabilities Members also have access to a dedicated account manager for assistance and special pricing on business machines and supplies, furniture, electronics, bulk purchases, and special order items (i.e., rubber stamps, notary seals, etc.). For additional information or to get started, go to www.printing.org/staples. To see a listing of all the National Buying Programs, visit www.printing.org/buyingpower. For questions regarding the Staples program or any of the Buying Programs, contact Justin Goldstein, Director, Member Services, at Printing Industries of America, at info@printing.org or...

Printing Industries of America has teamed up with Staples Advantage to offer an unbelievable cost‐saving program exclusively for its members through Printing Industries of America affiliates. With this Buying Program, your business is eligible to save on office products and more via the Staples Advantage program. This program allows you to leverage the Buying Program of all participating members through Printing Industries of America affiliates. Staples Advantage can help you reduce expenses through our competitive prices on more than 180,000 products available through the proprietary Order.StaplesAdvantage.com® website. The website allows you to place orders, track orders 24 hours a day, check product availability, review pricing, set up reusable shopping lists, and make returns. You can count on Staples to provide you with: Significant savings—an average of 55% off of list prices on office product purchases Online ordering, returns, and control on Order.StaplesAdvantage.com® Hassle-free 30-day return policy Ability to order by phone and fax FREE Next-Day Delivery on minimum orders of $30 Reporting capabilities Members also have access to a dedicated account manager for assistance and special pricing on business machines and supplies, furniture, electronics, bulk purchases, and special order items (i.e., rubber stamps, notary seals, etc.). For additional information or to get started, go to www.printing.org/staples. To see a listing of all the National Buying Programs, visit www.printing.org/buyingpower. For questions regarding the Staples program or any of the Buying Programs, contact Justin Goldstein, Director, Member Services, at Printing Industries of America, at info@printing.org or...

Many companies say they want to increase their company’s competitiveness and accumulate improvement goals more quickly. They want to maintain higher profits, increase production, and reduce waste. But where do you start? Lantech, a leading U.S.-based manufacturer of shrink wrap equipment used in the printing industry, turned to Lean Manufacturing over a decade ago in order to regain its competitive edge. It created a successful Lean environment and maintained it, becoming a benchmark for the application of Lean practices within U.S. manufacturing. Here is Lantech’s advice to other manufacturers: Implement Standard Work and Kaizen Lean Manufacturing is a management system born out of the philosophy and practices of the Toyota Production System—considered by many to be the world’s best manufacturing company—and have since been adopted by North American companies to systematically reduce waste, lead time, and achieve a better production flow. This is a proven model to implement a Lean system. Jim Lancaster of Lantech on the importance of Lean management Maintain Your Past Improvements After all of the effort you put into making your improvements, make sure they last. Stabilize your conditions and focus on continuing to improve. Do not concentrate only on the planning but rather more on the execution. This is done by relying on management to maintain quality as a key initiative. Each subsequent improvement should aim higher than the last, so that the pace of progress continues steadily. Practice PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act/Adjust) By applying PCDA principals throughout your operations, you repeat a cycle until you achieve sought-after results. Plan: Develop a way to effect improvement Do: Implement the plan on a small, manageable scale Check: Review for any variance between the predicted results and the actual conditions observed Act/Adjust: Take action or  modify based on your review By creating a standardized management system and a process to continuously make improvements, your company can reach goals and not just fall back into the same old processes that were setting you back. If you are interested and would like to learn more about creating and maintaining Lean Manufacturing practices, take a look at the video featuring Jim Lancaster, CEO and Owner, Lantech. Lancaster will also present Lean Management: Staying on Course with Improvement Goals at our annual Continuous Improvement Conference, April 7–10, in Indianapolis, Indiana. The conference also features a tour to one of Toyota’s largest plants in North...

The Premier Print Awards are the most highly anticipated awards competition each year. The program is one of the most prestigious international print competitions in the graphic communications industry. Thousands of entries are received from all over the world from some of the best printers in the industry. All entrants are competing to be awarded the Best of Category, or “Benny” and to be honored for their excellent craftsmanship. All types of printers are encouraged to enter. With more than 100 categories, a company is certain to find one that best suits their needs—including company size and specialty printing. While winning pieces are based on the outstanding printing that was done, one group in particular that has enjoyed success in the competition has been smaller-sized companies. Companies with 50 or fewer employees have been known to win big in past years. Our awards program offers sub-categories for smaller companies. While a small-sized company can enter any category, certain categories are broken into sub-categories based on small,  medium, or large-sized companies, which creates a level playing field for all printers. Such categories include Booklets, Catalogs, Fashion and Magazine inserts, Business and Annual Reports, and Print/Graphic Arts/Self-Promotion.* Some big winners from the past have been small-sized companies: Infinity Press, Inc.: A Benny winner in the 2009 competition with an employee count of 20 or less. Adams Lithographing Company: This 2010 Best of Show recipient is a small-sized company out of Tennessee. Body of Work: This 2012 Best of Show recipient from Sidney, Australia, has eight employees. In addition to their Best of Show win, they were awarded four Bennys. All Best of Category winners are invited to attend the Premier Print Awards Gala Featuring the InterTech™ Technology Awards and web2awards. This event is held in conjunction with either GRAPH EXPO or PRINT each year in Chicago, Illinois. Here, Best of Category recipients are honored with their Benny statue in front of an impressive audience of industry notables. Attendees of this event have the opportunity to network with other professionals and view all Benny-winning pieces on display—even more great benefits for a small printer! Get the recognition you deserve. Show the world that even though you may be a small printer, you can produce great pieces. For more information, visitwww.printing.org/ppa. For more information about the 2013 Premier Print Awards competition, visit www.printing.org/ppa or call Mike Packard at 412-259-1704. Enter online at www.printing.org/ppaentries. *View a complete listing of categories at...

Troubleshoot, Control, and Optimize. Those three words are vital to running a successful printing operation. Without an educated workforce, your press crew may be practicing wasteful activities and not optimizing time and material use. With the upcoming workshop, Extreme Offset: Troubleshoot, Control, Optimize, those wasteful activities—and how to solve them—will be brought to light. Presenters—Lloyd DeJidas, Director, Graphic Services and Facility Manager, and Greg Workman, Pressroom and Bindery Supervisor—will provide the steps to turn any pressroom into one that will increase job throughput while printing higher quality, more consistent color with less downtime, waste, and spoilage through the process of Troubleshooting, Controlling, and Optimizing.   TroubleshootAttendees will learn the skills to identify root causes of printing problems and how to quickly address and fix these issues. ControlAcquire the skills to control print color and quality by utilizing proper tools and techniques. OptimizeGet an understanding of how to find and eliminate waste in the pressroom to enable your press’s performance, as well as confirming that it is printing at an ideal, consistent state. Extreme Offset: Troubleshoot, Control, Optimize, will be held three times throughout the year— March 19–21; July 23–25; and November 5–7—at Printing Industries of America state-of-the-art facility outside of Pittsburgh, PA. This workshop has quickly become an industry favorite and is known to be a frequent sellout. Now is the time to make your reservations for the March event. Click on the image below to go straight to the registration...