The announcement of our partnership with Canon at drupa 2024 marked a significant milestone in our journey within the industrial digital printing sector. While we continue to collaborate with Ricoh, our alliance with Canon enables us to bridge a crucial gap in our digital printing portfolio.
This partnership helps us support customers across all production run lengths, from ultra-short to very long. By adding inkjet sheetfed to our portfolio, we can now seamlessly handle both short and high-volume runs.
Over the past few years, we've noticed that our customers increasingly need to use both offset and digital printing to meet their clients' demands more effectively. In other words, they're looking for more hybrid solutions that offer greater flexibility. We discovered this through extensive customer interviews and a 2023 survey of 200 customers worldwide. The survey highlighted their main challenges and needs:
Source: HEIDELBERG survey of 200 customers worldwide - 2023
Today, our commercial portfolio covers the full range of commercial printers' needs, including Versafire toner-based digital systems for short runs and low volumes, the new Jetfire inkjet systems for short runs and high volumes, and our Speedmaster presses for longer runs - among which the Speedmaster Anicolor press. These solutions cater for different run lengths and optimize cost per sheet.
What sets us truly apart from other market offerings is our unique ability to deliver a streamlined workflow that seamlessly integrates all these systems, allowing our customers to manage diverse print jobs efficiently every day. Furthermore, our comprehensive and robust service network ensures continuous equipment availability and reliability. This holistic approach empowers our customers to achieve their operational objectives effectively.
Ease of use and service are also essential
Another major challenge we hear from our customers is the shortage of manpower, which is particularly acute in hybrid environments where several types of machine are used. User experience is crucial here. This is something HEIDELBERG has always attached great importance to: whatever the technology - digital or offset - we want our customers to be able to use our systems as intuitively as possible.
In addition, maintaining operational infrastructure is vital. Printshops need predictive maintenance and service capabilities to guarantee the simultaneous availability of all their equipment, which is essential for managing total cost of ownership and profitability. We have been offering comprehensive predictive maintenance services across our portfolio for many years.
Data competency in print shops
At HEIDELBERG, we were among the first to stress the importance of data aggregation within our customer base. Today, the data generated by our machines belongs to our customers and can be used by them to manage a wide range of tasks and processes: print jobs, planning, logistics and consumables. These include supplier inventory management, internal benchmarking, production optimization, transparent service support and balancing the overall workload.
This is why data management plays such an important role in our industry today. In a print shop, data competence offers a competitive advantage, enabling customers to manage their operations effectively and efficiently.
The importance of color matching
Color matching is also crucial, especially in hybrid printing environments. Whether a job is printed digitally or offset, color consistency is essential. This capability enables flexible job scheduling and workload balancing, thanks to advanced color management and reprogramming software. Here too, HEIDELBERG offers a range of tried-and-tested solutions that are compatible with all our printing systems.
For the future, hybrid printing remains a priority for HEIDELBERG. Some of our customers manage more than 2,000 jobs a day, encountering various bottlenecks. The future lies in developing software capable of handling this volume, facilitating programming, reprogramming, and color management with minimal human intervention. We call this approach "Zero Touch."
Our strategic objective is to provide versatile equipment that adapts to a variety of work structures, while automating the process as much as possible through AI and digitization. This enables industry professionals to focus their skills on areas requiring human expertise, ensuring effective and efficient printing operations.
In this regard, I really believe that our partnership with Canon, our focus on data competence, and our commitment to hybrid and automated solutions position HEIDELBERG at the forefront of what the print industry needs today.
Dr. Frank Schaum, Head of Segment Print at HEIDELBERG
