Kirby Best, President and CEO of Purchase Activated Apparel Technologies (PAAT), talks about one of the biggest challenges he found in the analog-to-digital transformation of textile printing: the difficulty of feeding information to the production equipment. To realize all the advantage of on-demand production, all the systems within the operation need to be in sync and "talking" to each other. He talks to Cary Sherburne about how PAAT overcame that challenge.
Official camera partner of WhatTheyThink and the drupa daily. Video from drupa 2024
© 2024 WhatTheyThink. All Rights Reserved.
Discussion
By Werner Rebsamen on May 30, 2018
Kirby - nice to get an update on your pioneering endeavors. We go back a long time, your dad bringing the very first computerized hardcover binding line to North America. You initiated and managed the POD endeavors at Lightning Source. Those 225000 books a day are impressive, almost unbelievable, yet this is a trend I predicted in Publishers Weekly in 1981. People have no ideas how much is involved with print technologies, now being an engineering concept at RIT. It's not only printing books and many other items, we also cover packaging and textile printing. The Digital endeavors provide opportunities like never before. Maybe, one day, you can share your thoughts and skills with the students.