Drupa will once again be a festival of technology where crowds will be drawn to the printing machines using litho, inkjet toner or combinations of these technologies to deliver high quality print and high speed.
Less visible, but just as important if not more so, will be the workflow applications that enable printers to keep pace with a rapidly changing market.
Printers in future will need to cope with a vast increase in the number of jobs handled in order to maintain revenue levels; they will need to be networked into their customers and suppliers so that orders can be placed digitally, signed off digitally and perhaps printed digitally.
Information about jobs will zip around both internal and external networks, making adjustments to planning and schedules according to a deep understanding of other jobs going through a similar process.
Heidelberg calls this the Smart Print Shop and it is a huge part of the strategy the press supplier is pursuing for Drupa and beyond. It has been informed in part by its customers in the giant online print companies like Saxoprint with a number of eight-colour Speedmaster XL162s and Onlineprinters with more than 100 B1 Speedmaster print units. These companies have developed their own workflow software to manage the flow, imposition and delivery of thousands of jobs a day.
Stephan Plenz, board member in charge of production, explains: “A few years ago a company producing a €10 million turnover would do so from 300 jobs a year. Now it is producing 300-400 jobs a week. In future it may have to handle 200 jobs a day.”
To some extent the growth of online printers has shaped Heidelberg thinking which wants to make this style of workflow available to less specialised printers. To a greater extent Heidelberg’s approach has been influenced by the concept of the Internet of Things, or Industry 4.0 as this is better known in Germany.
This predicts that everything will be connected and therefore connectable by anything else via internet protocols. It opens vast possibilities for end to end automation, from receipt of an order to the final delivery. Of course within the factory space, JDF is required and not too many companies have taken full strides to implement automation to this extent.
This does not detract from Heidelberg’s views. All the evidence is pointing in this direction. In a Heidelberg future, the output device may be a conventional Speedmaster, it might be a Linoprint toner digital press. And of course it might be the sheetfed inkjet press that is due for introduction at Drupa. The software will automatically switch each job to the most suitable device, controlling colour quality and set up as it does so.
“Currently we are at Industry 3.5. We want printers to be ready for the next stage,” Plenz says. “There has to be a fully automated workflow, it is not possible to have separate workflows in a company. That is not the way of the future.” Instead Smart Automation is.
The project calls upon the skills of the 250 software engineers that Heidelberg has on the payroll. This is more than other press manufacturers and as many as many specialist software houses in Germany the company points out. It changes the nature of a press from an item of printing equipment into a “cyber physical production cell”.
This considers a press to be communicating not just with an internal workflow but also to customers using Analyse Point as proof that the correct colours have been printed, to the service centres to measure whether a maintenance call will be needed in the coming days or weeks and to assess that machine’s productivity against machines in a number of similar printers. It will be possible to place orders for ink, plates and other consumables from the press console.
The process will start with a media neutral database that Heidelberg acquired through the purchase of Neoseven. It will enable customers to use approved assets from the data base to create printed marketing collateral. Online approvals will free a job into production where a new Prinect Portal allows managers to track job progress “and help them make the right decisions every day”.
This will sport a new style interface to make it easier to navigate and drill down through the specifications, progress and all other details of a print job. It will be a universal interface for all staff in the business. Prinect Portal is unveiled at Drupa.
One of the strengths of the Cerm MIS that Heidelberg bought in was its scheduling application which could group together jobs sharing similar production conditions or delivery dates to help increase efficiency. This is undoubtedly part of the Smart Automation approach.
Smart Automation will select the right press and production path for any job based on a number of changing variables including delivery time, equipment availability, costs and personnel available.
If the the litho press has become a cyber physical cell, the Linoprint is an “autonomous high technology production working cell”. It shares the same workflow as the litho machines, explaining why Heidelberg built its own digital front end for the Linoprint as it had built its own Rips in an earlier generation of workflows.
“A print business cannot operate separate workflows for litho or digital production,” says Plenz. “This cannot be the way for the future. Printers can’t use USB to transfer data between equipment, machines must be sending and receiving data continuously.
“A lot of printers need to become more efficient to be competitive. They need productivity and flexibility and if the production cell is not fully integrated printers will be in difficulties in future.
“This is not about running a press at 25,000sph. It’s about using Intellistart to minimise makeready and working with a new user interface for better organisation.”
Colour is vital to this because there can be no difference because a different technology has been used. The Ricoh engine used in the Linoprints is praised as a match for Xerox iGen technology. However, Heidelberg chose to develop its own digital front end for the digital press in order to ensure complete integration and to implement its own colour management.
In a future where a customer orders frequent reprints in small batches there has to be consistency between locations and over time. Plenz cites the example of a sun screen supplier ordering labels at the start of the summer season.
The initial order can be conservative because additional labels can be produced at short notice depending on the weather confident that quality will be consistent. “We have to be excellent in every product we deliver. They must perform and offer full integration,” he adds.
The new press operator interface has been created after analysing working practices at a number of leading printers. Operators had cameras fitted to follow their movements during the day. To set up a B1 press might require an operator pressing 100 buttons, says Plenz.
In a world where there are going to be far more makereadies, being able to reduce this decision making process to a minimum is vital to eliminate errors that can come in towards the end of a shift.
The industrial digital press, as Heidelberg seems to be billing the B1 inkjet machine, must also be completely integrated into this production network. “This is necessary for our customers something different to their customers in terms of flexibility for short runs,” he says.
Automation will also extend to finishing with the company’s partners like Masterwork and Polar integrating their equipment into the Prinect workflow. It will also include integration to Muller Martini stitchers and binders.
At a recent Fast Turnaround open house in Brentford, Heidelberg pulled together a demonstration that combined digitally printed and litho printed sections (dried using LED UV), folding these and finishing on a Presto II Digital saddle stitcher.
Muller Martini shares the same vision of a fully integrated Industry 4.0 world. Its workflow systems communicate to a central hub or to Switzerland for remote monitoring.
The integrated network is in place at the commercial Print Media Centre in Wiesloch which will play a key role during Drupa. Because this super showroom can hold examples of almost every press that Heidelberg can sell, printers wanting a more standard press than can be taken to Dusseldorf, will be invited to the factory. It has been designed with the new corporate look and messaging in mind.
At Drupa the branding will be about Simply Smart, relayed as the technology, the combination of consumables that match the technology and job, the partners that will also feature and through the Prinect Portal as the means to control the business, from a mobile computer thanks to implementation of cloud technologies.
It will be the way to access Heidelberg expertise as well as to the online shops to order spares and consumables.
Smart Automation will select the right press and production path for any job based on a number of changing variable including delivery time, equipment availability, costs and personnel available.
Stephan Plenz: “There has to be a fully automated workflow, it is not possible to have separate workflows in a company. That is not the way of the future.”
