Heidelberg has presented Print Shop Analytics, the first Cloud-based part of its Prinect workflow and broader Heidelberg Plus digital ‘ecosystem’ gateway, that will allow real time performance monitoring of connected print sites.
Featured as part of the German press manufacturer’s recent hybrid online and in-person Innovation Week event, Print Shop Analytics is the first Cloud-based Prinect app to be offered through the Heidelberg Plus platform. Developed in partnership with Berlin-based Pinguin Druck, a big user of Heidelberg’s offset presses, Print Shop Analytics records and monitors KPIs (key performance indicators) to optimise production by suggesting specific actions via artificial intelligence techniques if targets are not being met.
‘With the first Prinect app available in Heidelberg Plus, our Heidelberg digital ecosystem is gaining momentum, and the customer benefits of digitisation are becoming increasingly apparent,’ said Ludwig Allgoewer, global head of sales & marketing at Heidelberg. ‘Market surveys have shown that our customers urgently want the functions of an app like Prinect Print Shop Analytics that they can use to quickly boost efficiency while systems are running, and also reduce costs at the same time.’
The app will initially be rolled out to offset Heidelberg press users but Heidelberg UK confirmed to Digital Printer that the Versafire toner presses will also be supported by the time the Heidelberg Plus platform is officially launched ‘in the coming weeks’; at an online press briefing during the Innovation Week, it was stated that Heidelberg Plus was currently in testing but that commercial availability would be mid-2022. No decision about supporting third-party digital presses has yet been made but integration of the system with third-party MIS/ERP products was confirmed as an ‘obvious’ move.
When questioned about the decision in March 2020 to axe the Primefire B1 digital carton press, CEO Rainer Hundsdörfer said that ‘the market is not there yet’ but that the company was keeping inkjet digital printing technology in-house via the Gallus Labelfire line, itself the subject of a failed sale to the opaque Benpac group at the start of 2021.
