Ricoh Americas Corporation today announced its participation in SkillsUSA’s 50th Annual National Leadership and Skills Conference. Ricoh is once again participating in the Graphic Communications area of the SkillsUSA Championship competition, this year providing digital print devices for the new digital press segment. Its experts will also be on hand to help educate students on digital print technology. The conference takes place June 23-27, 2014 in St. Louis.
SkillsUSA is a partnership of students, teachers, and industry working together to ensure America has a skilled workforce. The organization’s annual National Leadership and Skills Conferences (NLSCs) provide a venue for high school and college career and technical education students to showcase their career skills. It features the SkillsUSA Championships, a showcase of the best career and technical students in the country, where Ricoh will participate. The contest rewards students for excellence, brings together industry experts to provide hands-on assessments, and continues training participants on future workforce requirements.
“Industry analysts agree that the growth of digital production printing is expected to increase exponentially in the coming years. At Ricoh, we understand that as technology continues to fuel rapidly changing workstyles, we believe it’s critical to help companies prepare tomorrow’s workforce with the skills needed not just to succeed, but excel in this new world of work, so they can take their digital printing capabilities to the next level,” said Tim Vellek, vice president, Production Printing Business Group, Ricoh Americas Corporation. “Furthermore, events like SkillsUSA become essential to the growth of both today’s and tomorrow’s businesses. We are looking forward to participating this year in the digital press section of the competition, and to see how students across the country excel in their chosen trade.”
This year, the SkillsUSA Graphic Communications competition comprises eight parts: digital press, digital workflow, electronic prepress, finishing, offset press operations, oral professional assessment, production planning and technical knowledge test. Ricoh will participate in the digital press segment where students will be challenged to set up a Ricoh device for proper file transfer, create a finished product that may consist of variable data or inline finishing, and finish with a short written test.
Ricoh’s production print group has created a customized supplement of its award-winning Flow Magazine specifically for SkillsUSA attendees. To subscribe to Flow, please visit: http://go.ricoh-usa.com/flow.html.
