Advantages and Benefits expected from Industry 4.0 by the Printers

The main benefits of Industry 4.0 include the most important features of Industries 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0, and also incorporate notions of how to make features from previous industrial revolutions more sustainable.

According to some sources, the Industry 4.0 could reduce:

- production costs by 10 to 30%;

- logistics costs by 10 to 30%;

- quality management costs by 10 to 20%.

There are also a number of other advantages and reasons for adopting this concept, including: (1) a shorter time-to-market for new products (2) a better responsiveness to customer demands, enabling (3) customised mass production without significantly increasing overall production costs (4) a more flexible and friendly working environment, and (5) a more efficient use of natural resources and energy.

It should be remembered that Industry 4.0 in itself does not represent any value. Rather, the solution approaches of Industry 4.0 pave the way for new products, product-related services and improved production processes (VDMA, 2018) through the concepts of smart factory, smart product and in the case of the Printing Industry, smart print shop, smart document or smart packaging.

Figure 3 – Smart Print Shop 4.0 Ecosystem (Source : From Roland Berger, 2015)

A Smart print shop

For these printing companies and other manufacturing companies, it is a question of evolving towards the concepts of "Smart Print Shop" or, more generally, "Smart Factory", that are more agile, more flexible and more responsive to customer requirements.

According to Kagermann et al (2012): "A Smart Factory is a single company or a network of companies, which uses the principles of the Internet of Things and Services for product development, production system engineering, production, logistics and customer interfaces to respond flexibly to demands. The Smart Factory masters complexity, is less vulnerable and improves production efficiency. »

These smart factories aim to create manufacturing environments with very little human intervention. They aim to free operators from tedious or repetitive tasks through automation and collaborative robotics.

The printing presses and other production devices, which are increasingly autonomous, will share their status information via a Cloud and will manage their own maintenance needs, and will adapt instantly to new production needs. Printers will be able to view the productivity of their press and machinery at a glance and in real time, for example on a smartphone or tablet, and take immediate action in case of deviations.

Production processes in the "Smart Print Shop" and "Smart Factory" of the future will be automated and cost-optimized and machines will take care of setup processes themselves, as they will be able to access production-relevant data from upstream.

The intelligent systems installed in the Smart Print Shop and Smart Factory will be able to exchange information on stock levels, problems or defects, or last-minute changes in orders. They will play a key role in coordinating processes and lead times to improve efficiency.

Interconnectivity will be at the heart of these intelligent printing plants. Under the concept of cyberphysical systems, for example, the manufacturers (Heidelberg, Koening & Bauer, Komori but also Muller Martini or Bobst) are developing the technology that will enable presses and other finishing machines to collect information and communicate, not only with each other, but also with suppliers or other print shop functions. The information flows they will generate will allow, for example, analytical and predictive models to compare their respective performances, to order consumables fully automatically, or to plan preventive or even predictive maintenance.

Smart Printed Products

The main difference under Industry 4.0 is that the products and printed matter in the case of a smart print shop will themselves have some form of intelligence and be able to communicate with the outside world and their environment, influence the layout of the reconfigurable production system according to individual customer requirements and ensure accurate traceability of operations.

During production, the finished or semi-finished product, personalised or not, will be able to communicate with the presses and other machines during the printing and finishing phase of the graphic chain 4.0, in particular thanks to bar codes. We then speak of Smart Product.

Smart Products are uniquely identifiable, they can be located at any time and communicate their current status and alternative routes to reach their target. Thus, in a smart manufacturing environment, these intelligent and personalised products encompass knowledge of their manufacturing process and independently lead their way through the supply chain.

Also referred to as Smart Document, Smart Packaging for the marketing opportunities of the customers and principals of these smart printing plants of the future. Packaging is said to be smart if it changes its business in response to internal/external stimuli and communicates with the user or end consumer, for example. An entire field is open to the brand marketing department to become familiar with this new technology and to give it value. Active, intelligent and connected packaging enables the monitoring of packaged goods and the display or control of temperature and humidity conditions. It can also have other applications, such as monitoring the compliance of a drug with a prescription, displaying the minimum durability date of a perishable product, providing access to traceability, controlling inventory levels, or triggering restocking orders.

Thanks to intelligent packaging, "...creating a relevant relationship with your customers will be possible via intelligent packaging, smartphones and via the web", a customer allergic to a food, for example, will be able to check by scanning the product packaging whether or not this food is present in the product he wants to purchase. 

The advent of "connected" products will considerably change this situation. Indeed, equipped with means of communication, the printed product will keep a link with its printer or clients and will become potentially an invaluable source of data.

In this way, Industry 4.0 will be able to help, on the one hand, printing companies to reduce the costs of their own production, and on the other hand, the customer and/or the final consumer to increase their sales thanks to the enrichment and valorisation of printed products.

The smart and connected product is at the heart of change. The combination of smart products, services and new experiences will disrupt old business models and destabilize the entire product value chain.

An Agile and Extensive Printing Company

Industry 3.0 promotes flexibility, made possible by a lean manufacturing and lean printing approach for printers to "do more with less," especially when demand is predictable, variety is low and volume is high. Industry 4.0 will focus on agility, especially to better exploit opportunities in contexts where demand is volatile, relying on networks of competing companies.

An agile plant, with flexible production methods and reconfigurable production tools, is capable of delivering individualized, sustainable products and services at competitive prices, in small and medium quantities. An agile printing plant could therefore be defined as the ability of the printing plant to respond quickly to changes in demand in terms of volume and variety.

A Relocated Printing House

Favouring modest structures, operating 24 hours a day, the smart print shops 4.0 of the future, more easily "relocatable" close to end markets will be less subject to labour costs, particularly through the use of connected, automated systems. Under these conditions, printing and other small manufacturing companies will be able to become competitive again, even in countries where labour costs are high, as close as possible to the end consumer.

Combined with a customised offer, this relocated model will then become competitive compared to the previous model of less flexible and remote plant, when comparing the full cost delivered to the end customer. This is therefore a major point in the industrial policy of developed countries: the ability to relocate industrial activity, which has hitherto disappeared.