When TrendWatch Graphic Arts released its Special Report on Computer Integrated Manufacturing, we received several e-mails complaining about our use of the term “CIM” both in the questionnaire and the report itself. The writers said that this is not a fair term to use, since so many people define it differently.

These individuals pointed out that since the kind of complete automation—i.e., full hands-off JDF workflow—many people associate with CIM does not exist in the commercial printing industry (with a few very notable, highly specialized exceptions), this could create problems or artificially low responses to the questionnaire.

Both complaints came from individuals who had only read the press release, not the report, and it’s true, release did not indicate how we had addressed these issues. For this reason, I would like to give readers a look at our methodology in these situations. While I will use the CIM question as the example, this approach is used in other tricky areas of questionnaire development and data analysis as well.