More Coverage on Ricoh in Japan

JAPAN QUAKE ,TSUNAMI & RADIATION SHUTS 5 RICOH PLANTS

From TonerNews.com; click here for source.

Further to last week’s report on the impact of the earthquake and tsunami on Japan’s leading camera manufacturers, Ricoh has advised that it has suspended operations at several manufacturing plants in the Tohuko, Kanto and Shizuoka prefectures.

The company also advised that none of its employees had been injured as result of the March 11 earthquake.The divisions that have suspended operations include Ricoh Optical Industries (optical products and projectors), Hazama Ricoh (product parts), Tohoku Rioch (MFPs, printers and toner), Ricoh Printing Systems (production printing products) and Gotemba Plant (MFPs and printers).

What About the InfoPrint Supply Chain?

Impact on Office Products Industry from Earthquake in Japan

From InfoTrends. Submitted By: Cathy Martin on March 18, 2011

Click here for original blog;
the Ricoh portion posted here.

Ricoh has stopped production at five of its manufacturing plants that produce MFPs, printers, projectors, production printers, printer parts, and toner. It is unknown when these plants will reopen and begin operating. Three other plants are partly operating that also do MFPs, printers, parts, supplies, and toner. Challenges to production will be include rolling blackouts and delivery of parts.

Signed Documents in a FLASH

PlanetPress Capture

View more information by clicking here.

This innovation enables a customer to shorten process time, eliminate steps, and save money.

Consider companies that prints documents and require a signature. It could be bills of lading or delivery documents, sales orders or contracts, inventory or warehouse tracking forms, work orders or pick tickets.

One company could print on an impact printer with a pre-printed multi-ply “carbonless” form. When signed, they separate a copy or two to leave behind, and bring the rest back. Upon return, someone separates the sheets which are routed, perhaps scanned, and filed either manually or electronically. The form is reviewed for completeness. Any annotations or corrections are handled.

Another company may print on a laser printer, with either plain or more expensive “NCR carbonless” paper. Multiple sheets are printed, a signature is placed on the form, and the form is returned to the company for the same process.

This solution allows the printing of one sheet. That sheet has been electronically saved in the server awaiting the signature. The signature is made upon the page in ink with a special electronic pen. The x-y sweeps of the pen on that paper are saved and transmitted to the server, which inserts those graphics into the document, and creates the image of the signed document as if it had been returned and scanned!

The completed document can then immediately be emailed to destinations such as the customer, the salesman, the branch office. Processes that await the return of a signed document (such as invoicing after delivery receipt) can happen immediately. The document can flow directly and automatically into a document content management archive system.

For more information, contact Warren Neeley, GM of PCI Solutions, 866-430-6202 or WNeeley@PCIprinters.com

Is all “junk mail” junk?

InfoPrint's latest blog entry describes the way to move your customer communications away from the "Junk" status to a valuable item to review. Personalization with customer data and names will get your piece noticed and opened, and best of all elevated above the other stuff.

See the entire blog by clicking HERE.

The Publishing Business and Convenient Statistics

Some say give credit to Mark Twain for saying there were three kinds of lies: Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics.

http://printinthemix.com/fastfacts/show/403

On a website called Print in the Mix - A Clearinghouse of Research on Print Media Effectiveness, it is proclaimed that "Community Newspapers Continue to Show Strong Readership". I grew up in a small town, and weekly got the Messenger/Star-Forum to peruse. More on that, later.

There is a weekly community paper in my metropolitan area, and it likely covers 30,000 people. With an unscientific observation, the most readership it gets is the search for the 2-for1 coupon for The Prairie House restaurant.

Here are the leading points from the survey:

The early data indicate that the positive findings are consistent with the earlier surveys:

• 73 percent of those surveyed read a community newspaper each week.

• Those readers, on average, share their paper with 3.34 persons.

• They spend about 37.5 minutes reading their local newspapers.

• 78 percent read most or all of their community newspapers.

• 41 percent keep their community newspapers six or more days (shelf life).

• 62 percent of readers read local news very often in their community newspapers, while 54 percent say they never read local news online (only 9 percent say they read local news very often online).

What this study is intended to convey is that local community newspapers are healthy, thank-you-very-much. What it misses is found in the very small print at the bottom:

• interviews completed with residents that lived in areas where the local newspapers had a circulation of 8,000 or less
• the number of non-daily newspapers that have a functional website serving small towns and cities may be lower than that of daily newspapers
• the average age of the 2010 respondents (51.2)

It is very possible that most or all of the members of the "research arm of the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism" have never lived in a small town with a weekly newspaper. I have.

What are the dominant items in a weekly like the Messenger/Star-Forum ? Pictures. Photos of folks in town, winning awards and having events. Personal news of graduations and weddings. A little local news about the government. New business openings are there, but never the closings unless it's the big factory. It is a rare small paper that has a good online version of the weekly publication; it is hard enough to get the paper out on time with the limited advertising of a small town.

Where else do you see this same stuff? Facebook! The average age surveyed was over 50, meaning that half the folks are 50 and over. I would be very curious about the results for 39 and younger.

Advertise in the local paper, but do it soon, and aim for the 50+ crowd. The rest of the audience is going elsewhere and fast.

New IBM Software Built on the Great Work by Our Friends at Alphalogix

Alphalogix Workflow Server Powers New Release of IBM Forms with Workflow 4.0

See the Alphalogix Press Release here

IBM’s core electronic forms and process automation offering is updated to IBM Forms with Workflow 4.0. This new offering is powered by Alphalogix’s enhancements of the Tasica Workflow Server. Alphalogix, an Independent Software Vendor and IBM Premier Business Partner, announced that their Tasica Workflow Server, version 3.4.1 now powers IBM’s newly updated and released IBM Forms with Workflow version 4.0. IBM combined their electronic forms product, IBM Forms, with the Tasica Workflow Server by Alphalogix, creating IBM Forms with Workflow in September of this year.

IBM Forms with Workflow 4.0 now offers a combination of enhanced electronic forms with a modern look and feel, lower total cost of ownership and time to value.

Tasica Workflow Server adds tighter integration with electronic forms in addition to improved performance for installation.

IBM now sells IBM Forms with Workflow to their clients in addition to IBM Forms 4.0.

In late Q3, IBM signed an OEM agreement with Alphalogix to sell the Alphalogix product bundled with IBM Forms in a new IBM SKU number and offering called IBM Forms with Workflow to their clients.

In a recent Proof of Technology for IBM Forms with Workflow, Alphalogix CEO Bob McCandless, stated, “The Tasica Workflow Server and IBM Forms product are extremely integrated, so much so our [development] labs almost seem as if we are one team working together.

IBM Forms with Workflow is available through PCI Solutions, a unit of Printer Connection.

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