Sam Gulve’s crystal gazing: What to expect at Drupa 2016?

EFI’s Sam Gulve gazes into the printing crystal ball and envisages how the Messe Dusseldorf halls will look like from 31 May to 10 June 2016.

29 Jan 2016 | By Rushikesh Aravkar

Gulve said that rapidly changing consumer behaviour coupled with disruptive technologies like the internet of things, big data, nanotechnologies, advanced electronics, cloud, etc will influence the way products are manufactured for the printing industry. “This will be evident at Drupa,” added Gulve. 

Citing an example of Zara from the fashion industry, Gulve said, “Zara transformed from one fashion cycle per year to one fashion cycle per season. They understood that consumer tastes rapidly change and strategised accordingly. They looked at how stores are performing and changed their product line-up and fulfilled the need for the fast turnaround. Look at the pattern, the printing industry is no different.”

In the 30-minute presentation, Gulve spoke of six key trends he looks to explore at Drupa in 2016.

Inkjets everywhere
Inkjet is poised to become a serious contender to analogue and this is driven by advances in printheads, faster processors and capabilities of parallel processing. The manufacturers will boast about the printheads jetting out ink drops which are less than six picolitres in size. While all these advancements will improve the colour gamut, it will also lower the overall running cost and thereby superfast and highly accurate digital-analogue hybrid lines will be realised at Drupa 2016.

Software everywhere
It is very difficult to profitably serve customers without a high degree of automation. Shrinking run lengths, a high degree of versioning and varied finishing options lead to higher error rates, more wastage and the need for faster setups. There will be the focus on reducing the touchpoints. Customers are looking to set up ‘Factory of One’. How do you stay profitable when the run-length is one? The software is going to be the key. Such software will prove to be major attractions at Drupa. Smarter software enables end to end automation, increased usability and result in faster ROI.

Hybrid production
Manufacturers are combining the digital and analogue technologies to come up with innovative products. A lot of hybrid machines will be on display at Drupa.
 
Eco-system of application
It’s not going to be the printing press alone. Like mobile industry which was completely hardware oriented has transformed into an apps-oriented one, the entire ecosystem surrounding the printing press will come as a package. Mobility, apps, remote diagnostics etc will play a crucial role in the decision making of buying a printing press.
 
Applications of intelligent software
Software are becoming smarter and smarter. Earlier software automated tasks, new generation smarter software will automate decision making. We will see a lot more applications of smarter software at Drupa.
 
Inline finishing, faster throughput
When you need a faster turnaround, post-press should not be a bottleneck. We will see different manufacturers collaborating to offer inline finishing solutions so that the touch points are minimised and throughput is maximised.