Author: Maximilian Spies

Max Spies, a true professional, is a printing technician and business economist. As an ERP specialist at zipcon consulting GmbH, he researches throughout the entire value-added chain and delves into the depths of the company's divisions. People, processes, and tools are equally important to him in his observations. With curiosity, backbone, and a healthy dose of the Allgäu's fighting spirit, he is able to gather information. His comprehensible expertise is the basis for result-oriented concepts in customer projects. Max Spies has been in the printing industry for 35 years, worked as a journalist for "Deutscher Drucker" and writes guest articles for the trade magazines "Druckmarkt" and "Grafische Revue Österreich". Prior to joining zipcon, he worked for an ERP software provider in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland and is an active networker in this economic region. (Profiles also at Xing, LinkedIn)

BP Celebrate digital printing Industrieumzug
Technic 0

Space at the old production site in Schramberg was just enough for two years, then it simply became too tight for celebrate digital printing. The company has recently relocated to Villingen-Schwenningen. Most people have moved before, but an industrial relocation of a 24/7 manufacturing company with a six-figure turnover per day is quite another matter.

Ralph Schlözer: Zippers Insights
People 0

Bernd Zipper had a real inkjet insider as a guest. Ralf Schlözer grew up in the printing industry. He studied in Stuttgart, Berlin and the USA, had a deep involvement in research at MAN Roland and knows the facts, figures and data. A man who researches markets and technologies and draws conclusions from them.

Skilled: Fachkräftemangel
Market 0

Of course, there are also new women or diverse individuals! (But in 1982 Ina Deter sang “the country needs new men”. The gender asterisk did not yet exist.) And the people (m/f/d) don’t really have to be new, but need some skills for the digitalized and networked world that has always been important, but can now be decisive.

Market 0

As different as the print market segments are, the companies are just as differently positioned when it comes to consulting and selling print products. There are onliners and there are classic ways for field sales. The onliners try to make themselves interesting with SEO and SEA, while the old-school hard sellers rely more on cold calling by phone to fill the sales funnel. At the recent Online Print Symposium, there was a lot of talk about the customer journey.

Technic 0

It is annoying when the user’s journey through the web store comes to an abrupt end with an error. Everyone is familiar with the frustration of online shopping: unclear purchase processes, non-transparent returns processes, pages that don’t finish loading, or simply errors in the applications themselves, such as when the data upload doesn’t work or the next page in the web store simply isn’t accessible.

People 0

The automation of processes is the result of standardization. The goal is to streamline processes or scale a business model. Every media designer who works with open data, regardless of format, knows that countless parameters have to be addressed. Among professionals, this in itself does not always go smoothly. But if the data comes from a system that is foreign to prepress, then the sorcerer’s apprentice needs an experienced master to ensure that the flood of data doesn’t wash him away.

Trends 0

Would you like to improve the world a little? Well, maybe not the whole world, but at least the immediate environment in which you live. Every change begins with the first step, and we take this first step when we are aware that something has to happen. This is followed by intrinsic motivation, that is, a genuine and urgent desire. In order to change, we need to acquire knowledge of how things could be done differently. We need to practice and increasingly achieve skills that are necessary for change. In order for change to occur, we must examine and adapt our actions.

Technic 0

Who would go into the jungle without a guide or try to climb a mountain without any experience? Why do people do in the digital world what they would not do in real life? Those who go without confidants and without security can only fail, whether in real or virtual life! In the printing industry, this affects large and small companies. Let’s take a look at the situation and give you a framework for the solution approach to more security.

Trends 0

Only those who measure and check their results will be able to improve. Whether it is Kaizen, Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma, Total Quality Management or Continuous Improvement, in order to optimize processes, the “Key Performance Indicators” (KPIs) must be considered. Performance data is a sensitive area and KPIs and visual management must be understood as an overarching project and developed with stakeholder participation.

Trends 0

“We print your newspaper,” says Presse-Druck- und Verlags-GmbH Augsburg, the print shop of the Augsburger Allgemeine, the second-largest regional daily newspaper in Germany, offering customer magazines with a newspaper look. Flyeralarm has also expanded its range of corporate publishing services. Which is clever, because a customer magazine is an excellent tool for corporate communications.

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