The world’s biggest offset press manufacturer will exhibit the digitised future of the print media industry under the motto Simply Smart at drupa next year.
The company says, at its heart, this topic concerns the pressing need for print shops to continuously improve their efficiency and respond to the global demands of end customers in ever faster and more flexible ways, and to meet this need, print shops must determine how they can digitise their business model and involve their customers in this process.
According to Heidelberg, the highly flexible production of a growing number of personalised print products has become a standard process. it sees, in the future, print shops embedded even more deeply into a digital supply chain with customers and suppliers, and will have to meet even greater expectations regarding additional services such as shipping and multimedia marketing.
Building on its collaborations, Heidelberg will widen its range of offerings with co-operation partners Ricoh and Fujifilm. Heidelberg has not yet released specifics, but industry pundits expect it to show its sheetfed B1 inkjet press, co-developed with Fujifilm. Heidelberg says it will focus on pioneering innovations for offset and digital printing, prepress, finishing, the workflow, and the associated services and consumables.
Heidelberg: exhibiting at drupa and its factory
The trade fair activities at Heidelberg headquarters in Wiesloch-Walldorf will centre on the broad Heidelberg portfolio, aimed primarily at customers who want to find out about the latest innovations, but also customers who have varied needs in terms of productivity, automation, and capacity requirements.
Harald Weimer, member of the management board responsible for Heidelberg Services, says, “Presented under the motto Simply Smart, the Heidelberg exhibits at drupa will showcase the digitised and industrially organised print shop as an essential element for successful business models in the future. Working with our partners, we want to offer future-proof products and services that help our customers to be successful.
“We believe that the integrated and networked print shop represents a trailblazing step for companies in our industry that want to move their businesses forward. By supplying automated processes and services, we are helping our customers to meet the demands that competitive print media production will face in the future.”
The Simply Smart theme is the company’s response to the challenges associated with Print Media Industry 4.0. Heidelberg says it offers specific benefits and makes it as easy as possible to work with increasingly complex processes and technologies. The company says most Heidelberg products are already suitable for integrating and automating processes in a print shop. The Prinect print and media workflow from Heidelberg forms the basis for integrated communication between systems and machinery. It focuses on the smart integration of offset and digital printing, additional automation of all production processes, integration of commercial processes, and the inclusion of print buyers in the workflow.
Stephan Plenz, member of the management board responsible for Heidelberg Equipment, says, “Prinect is the basis for integrated communication inside the print shop and between the print shop and their customers and suppliers. This integration is supported, for example, by the new Prinect Portal, which makes communication between print shops and customers much easier and more transparent; by the new Prinect Web Shop, which offers print shops an easy route into online trading; and by the Prinect digital front end, which can be used to integrate digital printing systems into the overall workflow of a print shop. “That is how we are helping make the digitized and networked print shop a reality.
“What that means is that, in the smart print shop of the future, the production process will be automated and cost-optimised and machines will take care of setup processes themselves, as they will be able to access production-relevant data from upstream. However, management is also integrated for monitoring business processes, providing print shops the ability to give their customers direct access to production processes.”
Heidelberg says its service offerings and consumables – or smart services – safeguard the smooth running of a print shop round the clock adding that, since print shops have open interfaces due to Prinect and the various Remote Service packages, it sees specific advantages in both day-to-day print production and in terms of services.
Using eCall, a press can automatically make contact with the service team at Heidelberg when a fault occurs. Service engineers can log into the customer’s systems through the open interface architecture and provide targeted support. Remote monitoring ensures that machinery notifies the service team of a problem before it causes a machine stoppage, so that parts can be replaced in good time during a scheduled service.
The company says it is developing new digital approaches part of the collaboration between Heidelberg and its customers. The first example: the use of e-commerce – among other things, through the new Heidelberg Online Shop. In a further step, customers will log into the Heidelberg web site to obtain a detailed breakdown of how their machines are performing. This will create a new sales platform for software, services, and consumables.
Through Performance Benchmark, Heidelberg gives its customers access to a database of performance data that they can use to compare themselves anonymously against other print shops and draw conclusions regarding their performance and efficiency. Since it has access to machine and pressroom performance data, Heidelberg can use Performance Plus to offer customers specific proposals for how to improve performance and can provide a solution package comprising hardware, software, and training that is tailored to the customer’s situation.
