抄録
In these few years, we often hear the words “On-Demand” or “Short-Run-Printing”. But they are not new concept from the standpoint of electrophotography, since the office copiers and printers have these characteristics originally. Recently especially the office informations start to shift from paper media to electronic media and there is a forecast that the paper outputs will saturate and will gradually turn toward minus growth in near future.
In these circumstances, the color electrophotographic technologies are expected to apply to the press technology area as its new target. In this case, it is necessary to make clear whether our customers really need current press's “Too Much Quality” images or not. On the other side, in the press markets a new press concept “Necessary outputs, in necessary time, necessary volumes should be pressed.” is born, that is, “Just In Time” or “On-Demand Printing”. This new trend “On-Demand Printing” is hard to avoid.
From now we think the press technologies and the electrophotographic technologies should have good relationship tightly to provide printing systems having friendly characteristics to users. The paper outputs characteristics should be more and more increased by adding new values, and we should pay intensive efforts to realize the prolonged existence of paper outputs.
