1998FAGAT
31 October, 1998 in Bangkok
Information Exchange Meeting
Mr. Teera Piyakunakorn
Project Manager of Information Center
The Federation of Thai Printing Industries
Full Digitalization in Thailand
Color Separation Service Centers
This color separation service group of business owners is mostly located in Bangkok and its vicinity, very few are in up-country areas. A large number of color separation service centers are using exclusively high-end color separation systems. In the early days, this group of business people has undergone machinery and equipment in analogue systems before. Now, Digital equipment has increasingly been put as replacements, thus working procedure is often a mixture of old and new. It is far from being fully digital. There are still places which can accommodateoriginal artwork done by hand: some color separation centers are doing page setting manually as well. But, this is getting smaller in proportion and the trend is constantly declining.Presently, the application of desk-top systems had been on the rise. Services offered can be complete or partial, for example some service centers provide photo scanning service, page setting, film output, and plate making as well as color proofs; but, some only stop at film output or give photo scanning service stored ina digital file.The responsibility of this color separation group mostly ends at plate making with color proofs. A few of them have good potential to get close to full digitalization. Almost everybody concentrate on offset printing system, thus their production outputs are normally metal printing plates or films ready to further produce metal printing plates. Plate making is done by the old method, but there is trend of this group to bring in the plate-setter, which will more or less make this work group in Thailand to implicitly reach full digitalization working process.
| User | |
| Printing House / Newspaper | 45% |
| Agency | 30% |
| Publisher | 20% |
| Others | 5% |
Printing Houses
The Printing house operators in Thailand mostly concentrate on offset printing system; their businesses and working procedures, therefore, are in line with the color separation business group. Although printing houses are scattered throughoutthe country, those that are situated in Bangkok and its nearby areas are of much higher proportion, and their production potentials are far more different.The working characteristics of printing houses in Thailand vary significantly. Some print shops cover complete services but some do not. It depends primarily onthe interest or the expertise of each business operator. Those who offer complete services usually start from doing layout and design, arranging artwork, processing color separation, making printing plate, and until finalizing the printing process. Those who are specialized in certain fields, meanwhile, provide specific services, such as printing service and so on. The trend for printing houses havetheir own prepress facilities is rising, due to the development of digital technology and DTP system. These printing houses normally make use of computers to do artwork. In Bangkok and nearby areas, Macintosh play a major role while in the up-country areas where print shops are of small sizes, more Windows system on PC is utilized. As for scanners, printing houses with their own prepress facilities in general use flatbed scanners while drum scanners are in limited number. In case high-resolution quality is needed, most printing houses will resort to using the services of color separation centers.
The working procedure in the printing house with its own prepress facilities presently has nearly reached full digitalization. The nature of work is generally Computer-to-Film. At the moment, outputting is still counting on service centers to a large extent. Generally, work is of single color or work with simple color separation. The page setting is done manually. But for some sophisticated jobs orwork with much detail, color separation service centers are still sought after. While installing imagesetter of its own for printing houses is expanding constantly in a satisfactory level, page setting and pre-flight check by means of digitalequipment to prevent errors and mistakes have also been put into use. As for color management system, it has been in use as well, but still limited only in the large scale printing houses.
Softwares used for the prepress procedure of printing houses generally are standard softwares for DTP, due to their practical application and simple to operate coupled with high potentials and efficiencies at acceptable prices. There is a tendency that general print shops will eventually have their own prepress facilities, because target customers of print shops would like to see a complete of close to complete specimen well before hand. This will also allow target customers to inspect, correct and improve to their satisfaction. Obviously, the volume of work to be sent to the color separation service centers is inevitably reducing.
In the hardware aspect, all business operators in Thailand are just users of technology, not inventors or owners. The cost of equipment and its attachments is high. This has been a major factor affecting the investment decision. The pay-back period is largely dictated by the investment costs. The procurement of machinery and equipment has to be done through a local distributor which is normally nota subsidiary or network of the brand owner, hence product knowledge and business understanding to backup after-sales service are not so good as it should be. This has caused a negative impact to the production efficiency of the business owners. Also, hardwares in general are delicate and obsolete rapidly. They are mostly out of date before reaching pay-back time. Upgrading of hardwares is more difficult than those of softwares, resulting in decision reluctance from business operators and owners.
As for softwares, the main problem is the language system, which is a significant part of printed matter. New softwares have always had to modify to accommodate Thai language, which is very time consuming as experts who know and understand systems are too few.
Humanware(peopleware) is another important factor discouraging digital technologyapplication in the Thai printing industry. Thai users generally do not have in-depth knowledge and understanding of digital technology; consequently, machinery and equipment as wall as related softwares are not utilized to their optimum efficiency. As a result, business operators and owners sometimes choose to spend less as they are not convinced of the capability of their staff to handle such sophisticated and expensive machinery and equipment. Solution to this problem is to provide proper education in education institution so those new graduates will possess relevant knowledge of advancement in digital technology. Meanwhile, appropriate training have to be conducted to upgrade current operators and users to gain better knowledge and understanding of digital technology.
In the meantime, the Internet has emerged and become popular in Thailand for the time being. As it is in a form of digital media, to adapt print media to be ableto exploit internet media is becoming more and more interesting. The multitude of interests will be dictated greatly by telecommunications system of the country.
Service providing Bangkok Up-Country Print Only
Printing with Prepress 50%
50%80%
20%Prepress System
High-end
DTP
20%
80%
2%
98%Other Printing Operators
In addition to the business group of printing houses which mostly are print shopswith offset printing, there are also other printing business which make use of digital technology extensively, for instance, providers of large scale format printing who mainly service advertising business group. In the old days, this customer group relied on the services of silk-screen printers. Now the efficiency of the inkjet printer is much higher. It can print on many different materials, and is long lasting. More and more customers are using this kind of service. Becauseit is directly attached to a computer, the working process, therefore, is truly full digitalization. The service providers of this business group are not very many; however, they can apply their technology partly to the offset printing system, such as proofing by means of digital system. This is because work files in prepress system speak the same language. Also the printing size is as good as a big printing machine while digital proofing equipment presently cannot provide the bigger size. The mentioned service is now in need.
System % Ink-jet 85% Electrostatic 10% Others 5% Problems and Obstacles
There are still problems and obstacles to apply the digital technology in the printing industry in Thailand, namely the hardware, the software and the humanware.
Telecommunications System
The substandard telecommunications system is an additional factor affecting the pursuit of digitalization to a great extent. At present, telecommunications system in Thailand is still analogue system. Although the government is pushing for changes and improvements to digital system, it would take a few more years. Currently, signal transmission cable is of low-speed system. The inter-transmission of data and information is still counting on normal courier. Telecommunications system is will more or less accelerate full digitalization as well.Quality Control System
Quality control system is among the problems affecting digitalization in Thailand. To begin with Fonts for Thai language, although computers have been put to use for quite some time, Thai fonts in different computer platforms cannot be transferred satisfactorily, causing considerable errors and delays. This is due largely to lack of co-operation and communication among the Thai Fonts developers: they have been using different sets of reference tables. The National Electronic Computer Technology or NECTEC is now mapping out the central plan of standard for fonts so that every platform is using the same reference table. In the near future, if everybody is using UNICODE, this problem will be eliminated.Color
Color is also a factor with problems in quality. Color management system in digital manner is not popular in Thai printing industry. Presently, people are stillusing personal judgment on color. Universal standard of color in digital management is hardly understood. The interest to seriously remedy color accuracy problem is minimal. Apparently, Thai business owners and job operators need to be corrected and educated genuinely.Conclusion
The total picture of digitalization in Thailand is said to have advanced to a certain extent, though slowly but with good potentials to grow. The domestic marketof the printing industry is big enough while productions for export still have rooms for expansion. A determined vision to further develop the work system to full digitalization, plus the co-operation among the business owners, together with good coordination of the printing industries and all -out supports from various government agencies concerned will speed up the accomplishment of the aforementioned objective.