Folio's recent issue includes a column entitled Production and Manufacturing Imperatives for 2007. The article has comments from several executives about the challenges for the world of production in 2007. Highlights:

David Steinhardt, President, CEO, IDEAlliance

"In the postal arena, the flat-sequence sortation system is going to really change how magazines look at distribution. There's a lot of ongoing work in the supply chain - carrier-route sortation, address-label placement - coming in over the next couple of years. Publishers really need to stay on top of the Postmaster General Mailers' Technical Advisory committee (MTAC)... The industry is still facing getting print predictability as defined by the client. Clients upstream, whether an advertising agency or brand owner, are dictating more downstream that they seek a better-defined manual process that leads to print predictability. What we need are tighter tolerances for color and tolerances that can be better communicated across that supply chain for better soft proofing. We also need better tools to predict color by substrate; there needs to be better definition of colors that you want on those substrates."

Guy Gleysteen, Vice president, paper and digital development, Time Inc.

"I think that as a baseline, 2007 is going to be as tough as 2006, so the pressure on production departs will be as great or greater than last year... We're focused at the umbrella level on strategies that lead to cost-effective automation. These would include electronic insertion orders, Web-based ad portals, and the elimination of hard proofs and use of virtual proofing. It's taking steps out of the production process and leading to sensible automation. Sensible, meaning they have a defined set of tasks around them and a clear benefit if you can eliminate those tasks."

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