Heidelberg has placed its latest Prinect Production Manager into its first customer site, with an expectation the initiative will go global.
The company offers Prinect as a use-based platform; printers use whichever parts of the suite they need, then are charged at the end of the month based on monthly data usage, which the company says is calculated in m2 TIFF-B.
The customer, Petermann Druckerei und Verlag, based in Germany. has access to the full suite: Prinect prepress, Prinect pressroom, Prinect digital print, and Prinect postpress manager as and when it needs them.
According to Heidelberg, the usage fee also includes automatic software updates keeping the workflow up to date. To make this possible, it makes some of the selected Prinect components (such as the Prinect web shop), cloud-based. Heidelberg claims that this makes it possible to achieve digitisation and automation of the production processes for virtually every print shop in terms of technology and economic considerations.
Sebastian Kreß, managing director, Petermann says, “As a smaller company, the Prinect Production Manager lets us take advantage of the benefits offered by digitisation. For us, customer focus and customer satisfaction are paramount. We meet this standard by systematically investing in forward-looking technologies and the know-how of our employees.”
Anthony Thirlby, head of Prinect at Heidelberg, says, “Digitising processes is not just something for larger companies. If a print shop wants to remain competitive, this is a topic it needs to address.
“It is a matter of developing a business model that focuses on the end customers’ requirements. This can only be accomplished with digitised, largely autonomous processes that allow the print shop operator to look after the most important thing: its customers.”
