Automation, Inkjet and People — How Intermountain Health Produces Print · Dan Duersch & Simon Ortiz
Intermountain Health isn't a printing company. It's an integrated healthcare network operating across Montana, Colorado, Utah, and Nevada — but within the organization sits a highly sophisticated print operation that produces everything from patient education materials to insurance, transactional, and member communications.
With a team of just 17 caregivers, the operation combines high-volume inkjet, toner production, nearline finishing, redundancy, and increasingly automated workflows. But technology isn't the starting point. The team first asks what the organization needs, what should be produced internally, and only then decides which technology is the right tool for the job.
And the economics are different. As an internal cost center, the objective isn't to maximize profit but to deliver the right quality, capacity, turnaround time, and cost while supporting an organization whose primary mission is treating patients. Investments are therefore measured by return, utilization, reliability, and the value they create for the wider healthcare system.
After previously experiencing turnaround times of three to four weeks, investments in people, processes, inkjet, Tecnau finishing, and additional capacity have helped Intermountain Health bring production consistently down to just two to three days.
In this INKISH film, we discuss automation, redundancy, equipment decisions, the importance of experienced operators, and why, even with increasingly advanced technology, the people running the equipment remain absolutely essential.
And perhaps even more interestingly, Intermountain Health is now considering how its print infrastructure could potentially support other nonprofits and healthcare organizations — extending the value of its operation beyond its own network.
Emballage Mega Packaging — The Risk Creating Capacity for Growth · Marco Macri & Marcus Guilding
Emballage Mega Packaging was founded in Montreal in 1991 by a family — and more than three decades later, that family feeling still defines the company.
Specializing almost entirely in folding cartons, Emballage Mega Packaging handles printing, die-cutting, gluing, window patching, laminating, and more in-house. But the owners believe that sustainable growth depends on more than equipment. Great employees, great customers, and great suppliers are the three pillars they believe make a successful business.
That philosophy also influences which customers they work with. Rather than chasing growth at any cost, Emballage Mega Packaging looks for customers with similar values and grows alongside them — protecting the service and relationships that have been built over many years.
The same thinking played an important role when Emballage Mega Packaging made one of the biggest investment decisions in its history.
After working with the same press manufacturer for 32 years, moving to Koenig & Bauer was not an obvious decision. It meant leaving behind something familiar and taking a significant financial risk. But after studying the new press's technology, productivity, service, and capabilities, Emballage Mega Packaging decided it was the right move.
The result came quickly.
Previously, two presses produced around 120–130 hours per week, and Emballage Mega Packaging was consistently operating close to capacity. With the new Koenig & Bauer press, production initially dropped to around 100 hours, and today sits at around 80 hours per week — despite increased business.
The six-color hybrid press with coating, UV capabilities, and extended delivery also means work can move faster from printing directly into die-cutting and finishing.
But growth doesn't stop with the press. Emballage Mega Packaging is adding die-cutting and gluing capacity and implementing a new ERP system to improve traceability, organization, and productivity throughout the company.
In this INKISH film, we meet Emballage Mega Packaging and hear a very personal story about family, employees, customers, suppliers, technology, and why sometimes growth requires leaving behind what you've known for decades and taking a calculated risk.
Because in business, not every investment works from day one.
But sometimes — it actually does.
The Bernard Group — Technology Should Make People Better, Not Replace Them
The Bernard Group is far more than a printing company. From large-format and online print to design, engineering, prototyping, plastics, millwork, assembly, fulfillment, and distribution, the employee-owned company has built an operation around one fundamental idea: serve the customer — and give people the tools and authority to do it exceptionally well.
Technology and automation play an increasingly important role, but not as replacements for people. At The Bernard Group, the objective is to remove repetitive tasks and complexity so skilled employees can spend more time doing what they do best.
That philosophy also extends to the company's relationships with suppliers. Rather than simply buying equipment, The Bernard Group seeks strategic partnerships in which both parties can learn, develop, and solve problems together.
A great example is its relationship with AGFA. When changing customer requirements exposed limitations in color reproduction, the teams didn't simply accept what the machines could deliver. The Bernard Group analyzed actual ink consumption, questioned the existing ink configuration, and worked directly with AGFA's engineers to develop a new configuration — replacing part of the cyan capacity with light magenta while simultaneously improving other aspects of print quality.
It's a fascinating example of what happens when a printer, its operators, color specialists, management, and an OEM work together around the same problem.
And improvement never really stops. With four high-volume systems running up to 24 hours a day, The Bernard Group continually follows the bottleneck — from prepress to printing, cutting, kitting, and shipping — using technology, data, and experience to dynamically increase capacity where it's needed.
In this INKISH film, we visit The Bernard Group and talk about employee ownership, culture, automation, color, continuous improvement, strategic vendor relationships, and why the smartest technology investments are ultimately about getting more from the people who use them.
Print Is Dead? Only If You Stop Reinventing Yourself · Primary Color · Dan Hirt – President
Friends still ask Primary Color CEO Dan Hirt whether he is really still in printing. After all, haven't we been hearing for decades that print is dead?
For Hirt, the answer is much more interesting than simply yes or no.
Printing runs deep in his family. His father's uncle worked in stone lithography in Nice, France, producing those wonderfully colorful tourist postcards made from black-and-white photographs and hand-coloring. His parents later moved from Switzerland to South Africa, where they established a successful printing company. Dan and his brother returned to Switzerland to complete apprenticeships in the graphic industry before the family eventually reunited in California.
Primary Color started in prepress, at a time when prepress could be an extremely profitable business. But Hirt could see what had happened to typesetters and realized that prepress alone wouldn't last forever. So the company moved into printing.
Then print changed.
The dot-com boom shifted marketing budgets online. Run lengths became shorter. Traditional print volumes declined. And rather than waiting for everything to return to what it had once been, Primary Color continued changing with its customers.
Today, Hirt says they hardly describe themselves simply as a printing company. Primary Color works with design, structural engineering, wood and metal fabrication, temporary and permanent displays, retail, events, and much more — with print becoming one component of a much larger solution.
Technology follows the same philosophy.
A Heidelberg perfecting press addresses longer-run offset work, while the Landa covers the range from one to the thousands. In large format, Primary Color has worked extensively with Agfa technology and continues investing as quality, productivity, automation, and customer requirements evolve.
Operating in California also means that efficiency isn't optional. Equipment has to deliver more output in less space and, increasingly, with fewer people — particularly as experienced offset operators retire and become harder to replace.
But perhaps the most important message in this INKISH film isn't about any particular machine.
It's about accepting that yesterday isn't coming back.
Customers probably aren't suddenly going to start ordering all those brochures again. Markets change. Marketing changes. Technology changes. And Hirt believes the job of a CEO is to keep a finger on the customer's pulse, understand what's happening inside the factory, know what technology is becoming available — and constantly connect those three things.
Because print isn't dead.
But waiting for the past to return might be.
The Machines Are the Easy Part — People Make the Difference at Prima IP · Alenka Volk
Ten years ago, Alenka Volk joined Prima IP with a background that had very little to do with printing. She was a lawyer.
Today, she is a Managing Director and co-owner of the Ljubljana-based printing company - and can comfortably discuss workflows, drying technology, digital printing, and the daily challenges of running a modern print operation.
But her primary responsibility remains people, HR, contracts and the organizational side of the business, complementing Primož Štrumbelj’s commercial and technology focus.
And people are particularly important at Prima IP.
The company has official status as an invalidsko podjetje — a Slovenian company employing people with disabilities — and Alenka explains that around half of its employees have this status. But rather than separating people into simple or repetitive jobs, Prima IP integrates employees throughout the workflow and production environment.
For Alenka, that is fundamental to the company's success.
Buying technology is relatively easy. It is the people who operate it, solve problems, develop products, and take responsibility who ultimately make the difference.
In our conversation, we also discuss Prima IP's decision to move strongly into digital book production. The company saw an increasingly familiar development in publishing: print runs getting shorter while the number of individual orders continued to increase. For Prima IP, industrial digital printing became the logical response.
But identifying an opportunity is only the beginning. Major investments require technology decisions, financing, convincing banks that the business case works in a relatively small Slovenian market — and convincing the people inside the company that the direction is right.
Today, those investments are on the production floor, Prima IP is growing its position in digital book production, and Alenka has a very clear ambition for what comes next:
When you think about books in Slovenia, she wants you to think Prima Book.
