Heidelberg is producing a web to print application which might only elicit a shrug: there are plenty of web to print applications available that are already more sophisticated than what is known about Smart Product at this point. It is a cloud application that is another part of the Prinect Direct family that will surely prove to be as important to Heidelberg as the XL106 has been. This is surely not the end of the journey but the first step towards a new vision for print as an automated manufacturing industry.
Heidelberg already has vast amounts of big data gleaned from the thousands of presses and millions of jobs that these machines produce. That data is already sorted to find the patterns to alert users to an as yet unseen mechanical problem, or for ways to improve performance or the ideal settings for different paper types. This is already taking Heidelberg further into the realm of artificial intelligence it entered with so called push to stop technology. Print production can be optimised. And that is Heidelberg’s aim from the capture of jobs through the new app to sheets stacked beautifully in the delivery.
Big data and AI though also open the way to more interesting functionality for the future. If print can access the databases that record the success of marketing campaigns, whether using ink or pixels, AI algorithms can identify the common characteristics that make successful campaigns in different sectors – the artwork, the combinations of print and digital, the effective messages and the selection of audience. Printers can then mine this data to reveal the success factors for a marketing campaign that can then be used to tie in customers. This is where Heidelberg’s battalion of software developers should be looking, and hopefully are. This could be a weapon that captures print in the digital age; something that is more worthy of Heidelberg’s capabilities than what looks like many other web to print applications.
Welcome initiative, but more is wanted
Heidelberg is producing a web to print application which might only elicit a shrug: there are plenty of web to print applications available that are already more sophisticated than what is known about Smart Product at this point. It is a cloud application that is another part of the Prinect Direct family that will surely prove to be as important to Heidelberg as the XL106 has been. This is surely not the end of the journey but the first step towards a new vision for print as an automated manufacturing industry.
Heidelberg already has vast amounts of big data gleaned from the thousands of presses and millions of jobs that these machines produce. That data is already sorted to find the patterns to alert users to an as yet unseen mechanical problem, or for ways to improve performance or the ideal settings for different paper types. This is already taking Heidelberg further into the realm of artificial intelligence it entered with so called push to stop technology. Print production can be optimised. And that is Heidelberg’s aim from the capture of jobs through the new app to sheets stacked beautifully in the delivery.
Big data and AI though also open the way to more interesting functionality for the future. If print can access the databases that record the success of marketing campaigns, whether using ink or pixels, AI algorithms can identify the common characteristics that make successful campaigns in different sectors – the artwork, the combinations of print and digital, the effective messages and the selection of audience. Printers can then mine this data to reveal the success factors for a marketing campaign that can then be used to tie in customers. This is where Heidelberg’s battalion of software developers should be looking, and hopefully are. This could be a weapon that captures print in the digital age; something that is more worthy of Heidelberg’s capabilities than what looks like many other web to print applications.
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