Heidelberg to Exhibit Digitized Future of Print at drupa 2016

During the drupa 2016 trade fair (Düsseldorf, May 31 to June 10, 2016), Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG (Heidelberg) will be exhibiting the digitized future of the print media industry under the motto “Simply Smart.”
 
This topic is about the need for print shops to continuously improve their efficiency and respond to global demands of end customers in ever faster and more flexible ways. To meet this need, print shops must determine how their business model can be digitized and involve their customers in this process. The highly flexible production of a growing number of personalized print products is, in itself, becoming a standard process.
 
In the future, print shops will be 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.
 
“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,” said Harald Weimer, member of the Management Board, responsible for Heidelberg Services.
 
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. The company is also continuously expanding its digital printing portfolio. As part of its ongoing work in this area, Heidelberg and Fujifilm will be exhibiting a joint development at drupa in the form of a new, highly productive inkjet-based digital printing system for industrial commercial and packaging printing.
 
What that means is that, in the “smart print shop” of the future, the production process will be automated and cost-optimized and machines will take care of setup processes themselves, as they will be able to access production-relevant data from upstream.
 
Service offerings and consumables – or “smart services” – from Heidelberg safeguard the smooth running of a print shop round the clock. Since print shops have open interfaces due to Prinect and the various Remote Service packages, there are 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. Thanks to Remote Service, service engineers can log into the customer’s systems through the open interface architecture and provide targeted support fast. Remote Monitoring, meanwhile, 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, for example.
 
Reliable and efficient print production also depends on tested consumables that are suitable for the relevant application. And this is where customers can choose from the fully comprehensive range of Heidelberg Saphira consumables, which include the Saphira Eco product line for environmentally friendly print production, a specific offering for LE UV printing, Saphira Low Migration products for food packaging, and consumables geared for use with Speedmaster Anicolor presses.
 
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.
 
Heidelberg is building on its collaborations. In terms of digital solutions for the printing industry, Heidelberg is widening its range of offerings with cooperation partners Ricoh and Fujifilm, so as to meet customer requirements with added efficiency and speed. The same applies to postpress partnerships with Masterworks and Polar that are designed to tap into more market segments.
 
During the drupa trade fair, Heidelberg will be offering its customers a comprehensive overview of the digitized future of the printing industry both in Hall 1 in Düsseldorf and at the Print Media Centers at the Wiesloch-Walldorf site. At its booth in Hall 1, Heidelberg and its partners will be exhibiting integrated business models for commercial and packaging printing. The focus will be on pioneering innovations for offset and digital printing, prepress, finishing, the workflow, and the associated services and consumables. The trade fair activities in Wiesloch-Walldorf, meanwhile, will center on the broad Heidelberg portfolio.