(July 06, 2008) The company promoted the event by telling everyone to "Make No Small Plans", and manroland more than lived up to its promise.  The large format Open House on June 24 at corporate headquarters in Westmont featured the Print Technology Center's ROLAND 906LV press, but visitors left with much more at the end of the day.

The ROLAND 906LV and ROLAND 706LV with inline foiler Prindor were involved in six demonstrations at the Print Technology Center throughout the day, which began with an opening welcome from manroland CEO Vince Lapinski.  Continuing with his message on how manroland strives to be your high performance business partner, Lapinski reminded printers that the company's message of "We hear you" resonates in many ways. He also spoke about manroland's recent rebranding, pro-vided thoughts on what makes and keeps a brand strong, and how manroland's storied history and success will continue through focused customer care, print-value, and ground-breaking technology.

More presentations and discussions by alliance partners included representatives from Kodak, Bobst Group, MBO and Prism.  David Kornbau, Vice President, Oper-ations for Strine Printing Company in York, PA, a user of four large format 900 presses, participated in an open forum large format discussion panel and spoke about his experience with manroland.

Learning the importance of printvalue programs

After lunch, attendees learned in more sessions about manroland's advanced sys-tems in place, including the printnet system with unmatched workflow integration and automation for quicker make readies.  Its outstanding features are one of the many key reasons why the 900 large format press produces high print quality with less waste, less stress, and results in a lower cost-per-copy benefit for printers.

The resource and partnership aspects of printnet and printservices were aptly handled by Hal Stratton and Jon Surch. Several key points hit home with printers as to how printnet and CIP control can be used to manage business costs, per-formance and quality.  A customer video testimonial from Schawk Printing ex-plained how they have taken advantage of manroland's telepresence remote ser-vices to have a virtual technician on-site 24/7.  Other sessions discussed the nu-ances of ColorPilot and the drupa featured Inline ColorPilot, which reads and cor-rects color in 14 seconds.

"I received a lot of good compliments and feedback about our Open House from the customers who attended," Lapinski said.  "They enjoyed the architectural boat trip on the Chicago River that we hosted the day before and the dinner at night. But they came here specifically to learn more about how making the move to large format could make an impact on their business.

"I think they have a better understanding of what manroland can do for them now that they have seen the 900 in action and talked their peers who are already using it.  The people who attended gained an understanding of manroland's partnership advantages through printnet, printservices, telepresence and printcom.  Now they know from this experience that if large format is part of their future, no other press or company can compete with our 900 series when it comes to output quality, automated performance, overall efficiency, and continued customer support."