EFI Connect, a major user group conference organised by Electronics For Imaging, Inc, this year ran from January 23rd to 26th , 2018 in Las Vegas and provided attendees with the latest training and technology details to help them profit from the analogue to digital transition.
Packaging Europe joined the event to find out about the possibilities and opportunities for the print industry and how to leverage the benefits of the fourth industrial revolution.
In its 19th year, EFI Connect attracts print professionals worldwide for a collection of in-depth, informative training and education on key management and technology challenges for printing and packaging companies.
The conference programme featured more than 200 sessions covering technical, business management, marketing and more for an audience of commercial print, signage and graphics, packaging and in-plant production executives from 23 countries.
The event also featured the debut of several new EFI products for use in the packaging and corrugated industries, including version 6 of EFI’s Enterprise Commercial, Midmarket Print, Publication, Quick Print, Packaging and Corrugated Packaging Productivity Suites for advanced, end-to-end business and production MIS/ERP workflows, EFI MarketDirect, a next-generation cross media customer engagement platform, Escada software, EFI’s recently acquired, robust corrugated process control product as well as EFI iQuote technology for enhanced estimating of versioned and variable-data digital print work.
Success in a changing marketplace
Many of the new opportunities for customers discussed at Connect reflect a market redefinition happening for the print industry in the wake of continued digital industrial transformation, underlining the message that “print is far from over”.
During his keynote speech at Connect, EFI CEO Guy Gecht highlighted the fact that the fourth industrial revolution results in a much higher demand for personalisation with very frequent design changes. "Technology is transforming consumer experience with on-demand personalisation. In order to leverage this, marketers need to think of customers as individuals and connect with them on a personal level, integrating data channels to create a user experience."
Print has an exciting role to play as a meeting place where the analogue meets the physical world, with inkjet and smart automation as enabling platforms. Mr. Gecht uses cardboard boxes used for shipping as an example. "These brown boxes are the black and white television of our age. On-box colour and personalisation will be the future."
He observes that companies who survived since the 1980s have several things in common: They embrace digital print and print beyond paper, they define markets and excel at them, and they cut costs without cutting quality. He points out that the ‘new print’ is all about putting spectacular images on essentially any material.
“With digital inkjet technology and automation, the ‘new print’ brings immense opportunity in the era of the fourth industrial revolution.”
Production opportunities with advanced inkjet innovations
Fast, sustainable, and superior-quality wide- and superwide-format inkjet imaging technologies were prominent at Connect, including technologies customers can use to move into fast-growing soft signage and industrial packaging applications. Printers on display at the show included the EFI VUTEk FabriVU 340 soft-signage fabric printer, the VUTEk 3r roll-to-roll LED printer, the EFI VUTEk GS3250LX Pro hybrid LED printer and the new EFI Pro 24f dedicated flatbed LED printer. EFI also showcased a new virtual reality demo of the EFI Nozomi C18000 ultra-high-speed single-pass LED inkjet corrugated packaging press.
EFI partner Ricoh Americas Corp. also featured EFI inkjet technology, with the versatile, 65-inch wide EFI Pro 16h hybrid LED printer running in its booth at Connect. At the event, Ricoh unveiled new gamification and cookies-enablement features for its Clickable Paper™. It leverages Ricoh's Visual Search image recognition technology to enable communications to reach beyond the printed page by linking printed materials to rich online media sources, enabling marketers and other users to make print interactive quickly and easily, as it does not require any special markings such as QR codes.
Streamlined digital production printing with EFI Fiery technology
Several partners, including Ricoh, Xerox, Konica Minolta® Business Solutions U.S.A., Inc. and Riso, showcased print engines running EFI Fiery® digital front ends (DFEs). The new, scalable Fiery FS300 Pro DFE platform used in several new print engines from EFI partners can handle high-speed sheetfed and ultra-high-speed continuous-feed B1 production and offers new features for superior colour, performance, usability and integration.
EFI partners’ new Fiery-based DFEs include the new version 6 of Fiery Command WorkStation® – a highly advanced user interface with new preview, search and reprint functions that can serve as the single point of control for multiple Fiery Driven™ production devices. EFI also demonstrated upcoming Fiery products: Fiery Command WorkStation for wide- and superwide-format inkjet and Fiery Navigator™ dashboard analytics for wide- and superwide-format inkjet.
Additional partners participating in Connect’s solutions centre included Enfocus, Esko, Kodak™, Motioncutter®, X-Rite® Pantone®, Xeikon and Zünd®.
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