“Automation is the only way to consistently deliver high volumes of short-run jobs while meeting customers' quality and schedule expectations."
HP has announced the PrintOS Integration Hub @ hp.io, a portal where HP provides technical information on how to integrate with HP Indigo devices and solutions, and achieve automation across vendor solutions. Due to the upswing in e-commerce orders, printers need to increase automation through multiple systems, spanning from submission, printing, finishing and fulfilment solutions, through to shipping and tracking.
“Automation is the only way to consistently deliver high volumes of short run jobs while meeting customer’s quality and schedule expectations” said Gershon Alon, Head of HP Indigo Solutions. “Customers are struggling to hire and maintain skilled personnel. Cross-vendor automation increases employees’ efficiency and enables the production of much more work with existing staff and resources”.
An example of cross-vendor automation is the improved integration between the PrintOS Production Pro DFE for Commercial Print and Heidelberg Prinect, which automates production and avoids human errors. Customers can now maintain a unified automated workflow, for both their analogue jobs and their digital Indigo press jobs, and manage them from their Heidelberg MIS.
"The enhanced connectivity between Heidelberg Prinect and HP Indigo presses enables Heidelberg customers to integrate the Prinect Business Manager (MIS), the offset prepress capabilities, and digital presses into one workflow," says Christopher Berti, Vice President Product Management Prinect. “That brings the benefits of higher efficiency, fully leveraging the original investment (e.g. offset prepress system), and the flexibility of using the same workflow for both worlds: offset and digital printing.It helps close a major gap on the road to printshops achieving end-to-end integration”.
“The Prinect integration with Indigo digital presses enables a single data entry point via JDF, reduces touch points and therefore human errors” said Liesbeth Van Assche, Process Architect at Artoos Group. “We send our jobs from Prinect to the HP Indigo digital press and our press operator does not deal with any job parameter settings, file preparation, imposition, or proofing. Press operators are 100% focused on printing the job and insuring the quality of the job”.
Automating color is also a key focus area for HP Indigo. On top of the already-supported Idealliance G7 color certification, PrintOS Color Beat now also automates Fogra color certification for new-generation HP Indigo commercial and labels-and-packaging presses including the HP indigo 100K, HP Indigo 15K, HP Indigo 12000 VP, HP Indigo 25K and HP Indigo 35K.
The FograCert PSD Colour Data allows print service providers to get a fully automated verification to the most widely used Fogra colour standards requested by print buyers and brands, validating that the press meets the highest color standards. With a touch of a button. The compliance of a given print job is certified against Fogra PSD, ProcessStandard Digital (ISO/TS 15311-2) and can be easily communicated with the print buyer, the brand or the QA team.
Automatic Alert Agent 2.0 for HP Indigo Series 4 digital presses (HP Indigo 12000 and 15K). This inline inspection system scans every printed sheet and compares it to its digital print file, automatically identifying possible print defects. AAA 2.0 now automatically diverts defective sheets to scrap and reprints them, all in real time with no human intervention, and no interruption to production. The system leverages advanced Industry 4.0 Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) algorithms, increasing accuracy and speed, to provide productivity and profitability for PSPs.
