IEEE, the world's largest technical professional association, has given its 2003 Corporate Innovation Award to Xerox for its DocuTech product line. According to IEEE's president, the DocuTech product line “unified digital electronics, computing and communications with xerography to create the print-on-demand industry.”
The DocuTech Production Publisher introduced in 1990 combined the prepress, printing, and finishing steps of the printing process into new electronic workflows that made it possible to digitally publish documents. A principal advantage of the DocuTech was its ability to produce short-run lengths of print jobs “on demand.” The full spectrum of black-and-white products based on Xerox's seminal DocuTech architecture now includes more than 20 digital printers and presses, ranging from 75 to 180 pages per minute. These products are complemented by Xerox's DocuColor series of digital presses, which combine DocuTech architecture in full-color digital presses. Xerox is continuing to build on that legacy with the DocuColor iGen3 Digital Production Press, a 100 page-per-minute press launched last year.
In addition, IEEE recognized Xerox DocuTech's architecture as the basis for two succeeding waves of innovation: 1) the transformation of analog office copiers into digital multifunction devices that could provide scanning, printing, saving, editing, and communications such as faxing; and 2) the emerging transformation of the print-on-demand industry into the personalized print-on-demand industry with the addition of database merging and Internet delivery functionality to the original architecture.
According to CAP Ventures, in 2002, the print-on-demand industry created more than 400 billion print-of-demand impressions in the US, with a retail print value of about $30 billion. For Xerox alone, revenues from the DocuTech product line have exceeded $17 billion
The IEEE serves engineers and technical professionals involved in aerospace, computer, telecommunication, biomedicine, electric power and consumer electronics and has more than 380,000 members in approximately 150 countries. The association's Corporate Innovation Recognition honors outstanding, exemplary contributions by a corporate, governmental or academic organization that have resulted in major advances in electrotechnology. (Xerox: www.usa.xerox.com)