How to Avoid Obsolescence in Your Technical Publication Printing

Obsolescence in printing can bring efficiency down and drive costs up. For any business, especially durable good manufacturers with a need for technical publication printing, it can prove difficult to manage.

Each new version of a document can mean lost product as you destroy what’s printed and outdated, or confusion as old documents are phased out. 

Rather than fight a losing battle with archaic systems, a business in today’s marketplace needs to find the right solution to the issue of obsolescence.

Obsolete direct materials like old user manuals or out-of-date tech sheets and instruction sheets represent a complete waste of precious manufacturing dollars.  The cost of obsolete materials is essentially an investment in technical publications that never reach the intended users. 

The good news is that obsolete printed materials are no longer an inevitable “cost of doing business.”

Print on demand with just in time shipping helps to manage obsolescence when it comes to printed material. Rather than print a huge run of manuals because it’s cheaper, storing it in your warehouse and waiting for it to become irrelevant thanks to new versions, you can work with a strategic partner to have your publications versioned as needed, printed when needed and shipped at exactly the right time.

The printed materials that accompany your end products are as critical to your finished goods as any other product component. Produced on-demand or just in time (JIT) to your production forecast, you can flexibly manage the entire direct-printed material supply chain with the right partner.