Automation, the Cloud, and Industry 4.0: The Future for Printing, Today

Simon Landau

In the real world, are many of us ready for the practical implications of Industry 4.0?

Change is constant: everyone’s pushing the boundaries in terms of ink, media, delivery, and design. Much of that change is driven by ever ‘smarter’ ways of working – being more connected, and relying on the cloud. But if your production set-up is still geared toward a team that’s used to ‘doing it their way, because that’s the way we do it’, then your march towards greater profitability will always be an uphill struggle.

“Automation, the Cloud, and Industry 4.0: The Future for Printing, Today,” held on Thursday, October 24^th at 10:00am in Room C146, will be hosted by Simon Landau, Director, Global Strategic Partners at PrintFactory. It will cover:

• What’s holding us back with traditional workflows
• Trends that will take the pace of change out of our hands
• The hidden hurdles to making the transition for an entire ecosystem
• And the real reason why not enough printers are embracing Industry 4.0

Isn’t it time for large-format printers to fully embrace automation on a global-scale? Why aren’t more printers using Industry 4.0-enabled machines that offer data-driven insights – insights that would transform their profit margins? Could it simply be that Industry 4.0 is a step too far for most people, in practical terms? To reap the benefits of basic changes such as automated – repeated – processes in practical ways?

Shouldn’t we be looking into ‘big data’ seriously now, and using software in a way that offers data-driven insights about every part of your process? Those insights transform your profit margins by using information from disparate, previously unconnected parts of your workflow: that’s the essence of Industry 4.0.

Many print businesses are taking advantage of the efficiency, productivity and profitability gains brought by automated workflows. Technology is also fast-tracking the path to ‘smart’ ways of working, and cloud-based platforms are part of the way we all think and work now – but not enough businesses are making the scope of changes that really delivers results.