Representatives of industry, academia and the international standards community met to discuss "What Drives Print Global?" at Rochester Institute of Technology's annual Gravure Day event. Nearly 50 RIT undergraduate and graduate students, faculty members and invited guests participated in the March 31 event and learned how standards are helping print become a global industry.

KEE Consultants, an international standards consultant based in France, added a global perspective to the event. Elie Khoury, CEO of KEE Consultants and Alwan Color Expertise, has a long history of collaborating with and supporting RIT. Khoury gave a presentation, "ISO Standards and Print Globalization," summarizing his nearly 15 years of experience implementing graphic arts standards. Khoury cited several examples of how embracing these standards led to superior results. At the national level, Khoury discussed how Germany had become the global leader in adopting graphic arts standards (with more than 400 printers being certified as ISO 12647-2 compliant).

According to Robert Chung, Gravure Research Professor in RIT's School of Print Media, the knockout punch in Khoury's presentation was the revelation that the German printing industry has gained market share by leveraging competitiveness. In a European market in which local printers in many developed countries are losing market share due to globalization, the German printing industry has gained market share by leveraging standards to produce high quality products at competitive prices.

"Mr. Khoury's international perspective has been tremendously valuable to RIT as we keep our fingers on the pulse of the global printing industry," says Chung. "The theme of his presentation, international printing standards help align quality expectations and reduce waste in the supply chain, is one that we strongly endorse. The more geographically distributed a company is, the more compelling the benefits of international printing standards become."

To learn more about how certification can make companies more competitive, go to RIT's PSA Certification site at http://printlab.rit.edu/psa-info/.