HP’s Oscar Vidal on Wide-Format Product Development

At the recent FESPA World Print Expo in Barcelona, Spain, Wide-format Impressions sat down with Oscar Vidal, global director, product portfolio and strategy, large format printing at HP, who provided a view of HP technology today and in the near term.

Wide-format Impressions: As the HP portfolio continues to grow, it's easy to see that HP is invested heavily in latex ink. How have the inks developed over the last few years? And are there any challenges or things or developments that still need to be worked on?

Oscar Vidal, global director, product portfolio and strategy, large format printing, HP

Oscar Vidal: So, you know, as you probably have seen over the last years, we have been evolving our generations of latex ink. So actually, we're already in the 4th generation of latex since we started, you know, 17 years ago.

We’ve been evolving in different directions, improving performance when it comes to scratch resistance, for example, getting a wider gamut, so the inks are able to, you know, express a better color. When we launched our last generation, basically we added white ink to the mix. So now we have 6 primary colors plus white, and we have, let's say, intense color, because we have changed, you know, the Formulation of the pigments inside. There are always new things that we can accommodate.

WFI: I've witnessed a stronger presentation of mechanical automation systems here that was impressive. What's driving that the most?

OV: One of the things we are very focused on is what we call streamlined operations. For print shops, challenges and opportunities for us as a technology provider to tell them is how they can overcome inefficiencies, and there are plenty, you know. It’s an industry that, interestingly enough, there are still a lot of processes which are not well connected, and automation definitely is one of the areas that we see area for improvement when it comes to making sure the processes are streamlined.

It's less labor dependent. It's less linked to skilled labor. Labor nowadays is not easy, so we can remove that barrier to our print shop owners.  That's greatly appreciated. So yes, automation or software solutions. You are going to see us move in that direction.

Whether it's true software or through AI, which we already have some tools in our software suites, or through hardware integration, it goes in the same direction of making the process, you know, faster, you know, leaner. And you know, shorter, which is what the industry needs.

WFI: Yes, and now it's almost schedulable, and you have a better sense of how long things will take.

OV: It's predictable because again it's not human dependent. Sometimes it depends on the person that does the job, if it's a skill, or [the person] just go to the job two months ago Whether it's software, whether it's hardware, we tend to remove the layer of expertise, leaving the expertise for really super complex tasks, not so much for repetitive tasks.

WFI: I see Production Hub includes AI features. How is HP currently using AI to speed up wide-format production, and what innovations can we expect to see moving forward?

OV: AI is going to be an internal part of our, let's say, streamlined journey, and what we are just announcing today is just the top of that work. I would say there's going to be much more innovation coming down the pipeline.

AI can help us in the software arena to make things faster and, again, less people dependent, and to avoid fragmentation. For example, having this AI enhancer for the image in production software. Very quick, very efficient, all in one place, and making sure that customers can benefit. The good thing about AI, when you think about, AI and HP is that we also have not only the software piece, but [also] the hardware piece, HP is creating AI when it comes to PCs and computing, and we are going to be using a lot of this knowledge and power not only in software, but in the computing piece. You should expect our printers will become more intelligent, combining software and hardware, and having this kind of hybrid computer architecture. You will probably see us moving in that direction.

We believe we have a lot of opportunities there, because first, we have a lot of hardware AI built in, being HP is a computing company too. And second, from a software perspective, we have a using Prin OS for many, many years, and we have a lot of data that customers have been sharing with us, so we can start using that data in an intelligent way to train AI models and to make sure that we use this data back to our customers to start making decisions.

WFI: What do you see as a priority for HP to stay competitive in wide-format over the next five years or so?

OV: We are basing our innovation on three areas: stunning quality; making sure that we deliver customers with output that is differentiated, that is unique; and we enable them with versatility. You know, super, you know, new applications. So that's our first pillar. Second is to do all this faster, faster, faster, you know, simpler, simpler, simpler. The streamlined process is going to be how it can use AI automation, you know, making that process much more efficient and accelerating it.

WFI: Going back to when you were just talking about in terms of maximizing a process and making it less complicated. That's such a good strategy because it not only helps address the labor issue, but it makes production more reliable. And it’s more approachable as somebody looks at it who is going into a new market, or adopting new technology, or even opening a business.

OV: Still, there is a lot of manual work and expertise and again, expertise is fading. So you need to make sure that you help these companies to continue to succeed in the next decade.

Also, younger people get into the print shops, and they want to start using AI to make decisions, and they want to start using processes which are much more automated. We see the generational shift where new people get into the print shops, expectations are different for people who are used to doing certain things in a certain way. And that was okay, it has been okay, but now people have different expectations [for work]. If not, they go to a different job and that's why for shops sometimes it's difficult because they feel this job is not attractive.

WFI: Finally, we are four months away from PRINTING United Expo. Anything new or interesting we can expect at that event?

OV: I cannot describe it because it cannot be seen, but we will be talking again. We'll have some launches. We will have some exciting reveals.