Search results

The purpose of this paper is to understand how Agfa, a division of IG Farben and Germany's leading producer of photographic equipment, adapted its marketing strategy to the new political environment created by the Nazi regime. This was a time when many consumer goods manufacturers suffered from the state‐driven reallocation of resources favoring the armament industry. Agfa, however, expanded its production well into the war.

This case study is based on archival records of Agfa's sales department.

This paper shows that Hitler's armament drive left room for non‐essential consumer goods such as cameras, film, and photographic paper as they fitted the regime's consumption policy, as well as its import and foreign exchange policy. A pioneer in marketing, Agfa was able to secure its growth strategy and its room to maneuver by focusing its product and promotion program on the socioeconomic needs of the “Volksgemeinschaft” and the “Four Year Plan”.

This paper sheds new light on the often‐underestimated role of consumption during the “Third Reich.” Furthermore, it supports the evolutionary – rather than revolutionary – nature of the history of marketing practice in Germany, as Agfa's interwar marketing policy features many sophisticated modern elements prior to the “Marketing Revolution” of the 1960s.

Managers at Agfa, the UK arm of the Belgium‐based imaging company Agfa‐Gevaert, were highly skilled in the technical aspects of their jobs, but lacked many of the essential people and performance‐management skills needed for success in the modern business world. Following a six‐month development program that “rattled a few cages”, they have been transformed into a capable and confident team, fully equipped to face the competitive challenges of the future.

Inconsistency in flexographic platemaking techniques was perceived to influence the print quality and consistency. The results of a factorial designed experiment created to establish which platemaking factors had a significant influence on the flexographic printing quality are reported in this paper. The objective of the experiment was not only to define the optimum platemaking technique, but also to improve the understanding of the characteristics and properties of the photopolymer printing plate and to identify the key interacting factors which have the most significant effect on print quality and consistency. Various statistical methods were employed for the design of the experiment and for the interpretation of experimental data generated. The results of the investigation have been used to fine‐tune the flexographic platemaking techniques to significantly manipulate the properties for the end‐use application to enhance printing performance and consistency of the plates.

NRCd have produced a useful pamphlet which, because of machine development, unfortunately will soon be out of date. In discussing six ‘full‐size’ COM fiche readers a phrase such as “The Agfa‐Gevaert LF 303 is essentially similar to the LF 101 reader…” repeatedly occurs. These machines are subject to the same face‐lift operations (continuous development) as the motor car though the design of one of the most highly recommended models, also “one of the older readers in this group”, has been stabilised for some years; it, the Microscot NMI 90 has had at least one change of name: it used to be the Scottish Instruments NMI 90!

Mastertool MT8 is a new dry phototool for the production of printed circuit boards, which represents a completely new technology. MT8 is not sensitive to daylight, is free of silver and inherently environmentally safe as the material does not contain any toxic ingradients, no processing chemicals are required and no waste arises. For imaging, the non‐transparent thin bismuth layer of MT8, embedded between polymers, is agglomerated into beads through IR laser radiation, making this area optically transparent. Light and electron microscopy as well as X‐ray diffractometry are used to characterise the composition of the material and the details of the recording processes. Based on finite element modelling, it was possible to interpret theoretically the experimentally determined dependence of the sensitivity on the recording speed. Understanding these material properties enables plotter optimisation for MT8.

Commercial pressure has forced improvements in the reduction of press down time. One restraining factor for the flexographic printing process has been the lack of predictability and consistency. The results of a factorial designed experiment, are reported in this paper. Investigations into the complex interactions of many variable factors that take place during the printing process were carried out. Various statistical methods were employed for the design of the experiment and for the interpretation of experimental data generated. The results of the investigation have been used to optimise the flexographic printing techniques to significantly manipulate the properties of various production components for the end‐use application to enhance the plates printing performance and consistency.

Most pages of text or graphical materials in a library are black‐and‐white and most of the work that a scanner will do involves black‐and‐white images. Yet, it makes sense to buy a scanner capable of processing colour images. The difference in cost between a colour scanner and a black‐and‐white unit is relatively small, and the colour scanner allows colour pages to be converted into computer images whenever needed. In response to the demand by computer users for the ability to handle colour, new models of scanning equipment are almost all equipped to do so.