Heidelberg has developed a web to print app as the next step in its Prinect Direct and Smart Print Shop strategy aiming at both cloud based workflows and autonomous lights out printing.
The new Smart Product app, which is being previewed this week though will not be released until later this year, is intended to capture work through online portals, through customers editing templates for simple single-page jobs and submitting the finished artwork for automatic process though to plate or a DFE. All the work will be carried out in the cloud as part of the Prinect Direct suite of applications.
“It’s a big step closer to autonomous production in our Smart Print Shop concept,” says head of software solutions Christopher Berti. “The new Prinect apps eliminate most manual steps throughout a print shop’s production process, from job creation all the way through to delivery of the finished print product.”
Many Heidelberg customers are already capable of doing this through web to print software, portals and APIs or hot folders into production workflow. And many are handling more complex jobs, including multi-section brochures and case bound books in this way, well beyond what Heidelberg is proposing at this first stage.
The app will allow print specifiers to upload artwork and production information as part of a job intent. The Prinect Direct workflow will take the intent and complete an imposition according to the information contained, batching jobs by delivery date, paper type, run length and so on. This progresses to output of plates, potentially to the automatic delivery of these and then loading in the press where the ‘Press to stop’ software kicks in to begin printing with no manual intervention either to process files of run the press. This is the goal of lights out printing, the different elements for which will be part of the Prinect Direct environment. This will be open to third-party applications through the Heidelberg+ hub, though Heidelberg itself will be responsible for the majority. These are the pieces of the jigsaw that will build the Smart Factory strategy.
At release the Smart Product app will offer the simplest of jobs with the intention of growing the range of products rapidly and eventually including labels and packaging.
This is the first app in what will amount to a full suite of apps that will underpin the future Smart Factory, enabling a full end to end hands off production of print and to “fully utilise the automation potential”.
The eco system that Heidelberg is developing is based around API’s using standard token baed protocols to build rapid integrations.
This is not an acknowledgement that JDF is finished. The original protocol for integration and automation in print, now two decades old, continues. The custodian of the format, the Cip4 Organisation has released its Interoperability Conformance Specification for quality control. This “focuses on the relationship and communication between real time quality control measurement/monitoring in a PSP, an administrative MIS system for the JDF job and the customer”. In other words, it closes the loop between the customer submitting a job, sign off of a proof and operation of a press. Heidelberg continues to be a partner of JDF.
