Digital BW, The Print

Hi Altaf,

 

MIS has, in fact, implemented some suggestions by forum members.  On the
other hand, for some of the products, like chips and carts, there do not
seem to be non-destructive tests or tests that are cheaper than just
replacing the items.   MIS tries to find the best suppliers, but once they
buy a large batch of products, they're rather stuck with that until the next
large purchase.  With significant numbers of their products, I don't think
there is an economical way to do QC after they purchase at wholesale.

 

I'm also not sure what the magnitude of the problems really is.  It may be
that an essentially non-moderated forum like this exaggerates the problems.
It's easy to see that a significant portion of their current spongeless
carts leak when the stopper is removed (and then work fine once refilled
with the stopper replaced), but beyond that, I'm not seeing or hearing
themes that are consistent enough to know what to recommend.

 

On a somewhat related issue, I've always thought that MIS didn't try very
hard to profit maximize.  The founder was an executive level mechanical
engineer and then Management Information Services chief (where the name
"MIS" comes from) at TRW who enjoyed inventing things like the ink loader
that is a key part of their operations and unique to the industry.  He's now
semi-retired and appears to have the attitude that he's got enough, so why
rock the boat.  At some point I expect someone to buy the business, but the
owner does not seem to be aggressively pursuing that either.

 

From my perspective, a Photographers' Formulary type of operation would be
just fine as a model - forget the low level support and just serve the
typical old B&W hacker types - like me.  But, the customer base seems to be
much broader than that.  If I were in charge of MIS, I might just eliminate
2/3s of their products and concentrate on doing a few things really well as
opposed to trying to sell, for example, color inks to the mass market.  But,
it's not my business, and it may be that they could not buy large enough
batches of, for example carts, if they didn't also sell those into the color
markets.  My approach, as a customer, is to simply make the best of what we
have and try to avoid the issues - relating to not only MIS - that bother
me.  So, while the K3 model of the giants will take the bulk of the market,
I'll probably always be trying to find a way to do better for less.  For
that approach, MIS products and service do just fine.

 

One area where I think MIS could and may well step in is coordinating B&W
printing workshops.  I suspect this type of activity might have the indirect
benefit of giving MIS organized feedback on their own products and what
types of support are needed.  We'll see.  In the meantime, if I see problems
and remedies that I think will work, I'll sure pass them along to MIS, and I
think they listen.

 

Paul

www.PaulRoark.com <http://www.paulroark.com/>  

 

 

  _____  

From: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Altaf
Bhimji
.

 MIS was moving towards implementing 
having stricter QC standards? Do you think they could consider some 
of the feedback, maybe raise their prices a bit, but not have some of 
the problems that have been discussed here?

. 



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