Features Software
HP Indigo accelerates industry 4.0 solutions

HP, Inc., unveils 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 fulfillment solutions 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,” said 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 print shops 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 per cent focused on printing the job and insuring the quality of the job.”