As one would expect from a Frank Romano presentation, it was overall, an excellent combination of workflow history, humor, and sobering reality. Frank pointed out that the workflow is now digital and going even more digital. He went onto express what many of us know that at this moment in time workflow solutions are basically chaos. (A concept unfortunately confirmed by a user of workflows systematic of many of the problems outlined as we go on).
Frank has a concern that “standards†or lack thereof is a huge problem in our industry today. He expressed concern that we need to all remember the industry comes first or there will be no industry and we will all be looking for work. One of his main concerns of standards is that by and large they are “fake†because a bunch of manufactures get together and create “standards†that only they conform to.
So, Frank asked rhetorically “Who speaks for the user?†Unfortunately, the answer right now is no one. Associations have become dependant upon vendor sponsorship to remain healthy as membership dues alone can no longer support an association. Even standards committees are most often made up of who can afford to go which happens to be…use guessed it…the suppliers.
Workflows abound; many still utilize sneaker-net; hot folders remain highly utilized and perhaps even effective; PDF is obviously viable and widely used; and some workflows are simply application based.
It was time for a moment of levity as Frank told us about the curse of the creative types. Frank asked his son who is a designer what he does for a living. He son responded, “I change my mind.†I know as printers we don’t actually find that funny do we?
Because everybody in our industry is doing everything we now have too much overlap in our industry. Digital print technologies in particular are driving what Frank terms printing process roulette. Printing process roulette is the work flowing from one process to another. At the same time there is a reduction in volume. We have lost 14% in the lost decade to electronic media. (Oh, you mean like people who blog?)
Frank’s final concern (that I was able to catch – this guy moves fast) is that the industry is a pyramid. Big printers are at the top, middle size printers, and small printers are in the middle and there are 30,000 of them today producing less than 12 million in sales a year. Frank sees about half of these players going away through mergers and attrition over the next several years. If this happens who is going to be purchasing all these cool chaotic workflow tools all the vendors are putting out there.
Frank closed with a very simple slide
- What we need
- A buzzword translator
- A unified field theory that shows how all this stuff works together
- Neutrality and objectivity
- Strategies for legacy systems
- Strategies for multiple process environments
- Young people are important