Excellence comes from perseverance
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By Gail Flower
The industrial and specialty printing industry seems poised for recovery. Positive signs of renewal can be found most everywhere, though you may have to look for them. And the more signs you see, the more amazed you become at the resilience and growth in this market.
But don’t take my word for it; look at the indicators. You’ll find hundreds of listings on job-search sites for press operators, printing technicians, and other positions. And from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics this June comes the following information: “Manufacturing, temporary help services, and mining added jobs, while construction employment declined. The unemployment rate edged down to 9.7%.”
When looking in the materials area, in ink additives, Shamrock Technologies experienced lagging sales in 2008 but saw a nice recovery beginning the second half of 2009, continuing into Q1 of 2010, according to Craig Baudendistel, director of sales. In fiscal 2009, Henkel reported a decrease of sales of 3.9% compared to the previous year and sales in the adhesive-technologies sector decreased organically by 10.2%. In Q1 of 2010 though, overall sales increased by 7.8% with adhesive technologies reporting double-digit organic growth amounting to a highly encouraging 14.5%.
Good news prevails in many other areas. In May, DuPont claimed that it has advanced materials science to a scalable process for inexpensive OLED manufacturing to accommodate TV-size displays. Printed devices using the DuPont process have achieved lifetimes to 50% of initial luminance of 29,000 hours for red, 34,000 hours for blue, and 110,000 hours for green at TV-brightness levels. In approximately the same time period, Princeton University professor Yueh-Lin Loo announced a new plasticizing process for her all-plastic transistors that she thinks will make the expensive indium-tin-oxide in solar cells obsolete.
Furthermore, welcome news may be in store for U.S.-based electronics printers who’ve seen business move to China. Foxconn International Holdings Ltd., one of the largest contractors for Western, Japanese, and Asian electronics firms, recently announced that it will more than double the salaries of its Chinese factory employees in response to bad publicity for recent worker suicides. Even though the increase isn’t substantial by Western standards, an average wage of $130 monthly rising to $293 monthly means the rising cost of manufacturing will surely ensue, added on to the cost of shipping and other factors. As a result, keeping printing local may become more attractive.
I sat at a table with the most amazing printers at the Printed Electronics & Membrane Switch Symposium in Phoenix, AZ, last May. They had the same concerns that one hears all the time: competition, capability, lowered cost, the need for partners, the search for new ways to produce printed industrial and decorative products. “If I could change prices throughout my store electronically from one central location, I could save time, money, and lots of confusion,” one person confided. Each person was looking for a way to increase profitability, to do his job better, to be more successful. And they took the time to reach out to presenters and attendees alike to make that important contact.
If there are any lessons to be learned from this recession, they must go beyond optimizing quality, looking for lower cost solutions, recycling, going green, and finding ways to differentiate products. It takes outreach and long-term solutions. The keys are in promoting change, taking leadership roles, meeting new people, reading about new ideas, and working for success daily. Every printer must grasp each opportunity to grow, every time, without fail. Excellence comes from perseverance, and that’s what this industry is all about: perseverance and energy to make new ideas happen through printing.
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