Back in the early eighties, when the optical disc was first introduced, it was considered a giant leap forward for audio storage and reproduction. For many years this new format was produced solely by the major record companies in clean-room environments, with both operators and support staff dressed ready for the next mission to the moon!
In the early days, the job run quantity of discs, produced for each album, was very large with single runs being in the tens of thousands. Today, with the advent of the internet and just-in-time production infra-structures, those run quantities per job, have become much smaller with multiple simultaneous job runs being the norm in all companies, large and small; thus making the printing process a serious bottleneck to production and above all very costly.