Imagining tomorrow’s label business

This applied across the whole printing press and finishing line community, whether analog or digital, sheet-fed or web-fed, narrow or wide web, and into all aspects of converting and finishing from inspection to slitting and die-cutting, cold foiling and spot or gloss varnishing.

No matter whether visitors were looking at self-adhesive label, shrink sleeve, wet-glue label, flexible packaging, sachet or pouch production, commercial or book printing, the message from press and ancillary suppliers was much the same: responsive and powerful solutions that include full JDF integration across the whole shop floor, ever-more innovative production control tools, the creation of ‘Smart factories’ and more efficient ways of managing resources.

Press automation

For Heidelberg, now including Gallus in its booth, the stated aim announced at drupa is to make printing presses completely self-managing units, where everything from production planning, to consumables ordering, to predictive maintenance, are all generated from the press itself. It calls this its ‘Push to Stop’ concept, with the presses themselves taking over all aspects of production.

Heidelberg says this will massively increase productivity, and free up converters to focus on developing their business, rather than spending time managing manufacture.

Part of the new ‘driver-less’ push is in the Heidelberg cloud-based Assistant, where everything from press performance to planning to scheduling is online and instantly available to management.