BOBST’s Industry vision becomes a reality through the four pillars of Connectivity, Digitalization, Automation and Sustainability

Tell us about your drupa 2024 experience?
This was my fifth drupa and this edition was one where you could see and feel the changing landscape of print and packaging. There have been recent editions of drupa where there has been much hype and expectation around specific markets and print technologies. By and large, these have failed to materialize in the ways anticipated. However, this year discussions were more focused on process improvement and the use of software and workflow to do more with what is already there. Digitalization is the thread linking it all and pulling together the potential to improve processes and boost a converter’s bottom line.

How can these improvements and benefits be realized?
It’s a big evolution and will take time to come to be fully realized, but the journey has already started. If you look at a print process like flexo, its evolution started many years ago. The transportation of materials has improved, servo drives have increased press performance, registration is a given, while plates and aniloxes are developing to provide more efficient and consistent production. Full control of the workflow is the next logical step and will close the loop to give an absolute vision of production. This will allow printers to move away from the legacy way of onboarding work, manufacturing the job and then working out the value to the business after the matter. Using end-to-end workflows and data, coupled with cutting-edge machinery, allows the price per item or sheet to be known upfront. In addition, manufacturing is optimized and utilization maximized, with jobs sent to the best press in the correct location, at the right time. Machinery is benchmarked and able to be understood and controlled in a way hitherto not possible.

You can quickly extrapolate that the potential is huge. If you take a multi-site converter with operations in multiple countries, for example, they can send the information out to their machines and get the same setup, resulting in consistency and quality across their production, wherever it is located, improving output and margins while also reducing waste.

How was this potential reflected on the BOBST stand at drupa 2024?
We took the decision to invite customers and prospects on a journey to explore their pain points and present the proof points of the solutions that we can offer them. The display of heavy machinery was kept to a minimum. We offered a live-show experience on the ‘concept machine’ covering the four packaging industries - Folding Carton, Flexible Packaging, Corrugated Board and Labels and BOBST Connect, our cloud-based digital platform, in the centre. Machinery wasn’t the most important message at the show, rather the shift toward digitalization. This reflects our vision to shape the future of packaging, a vision that is already becoming a reality today.

We laid out this vision in 2020. It is built upon the four pillars of connectivity, digitalization, automation and sustainability. While the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain challenges and global conflicts have placed the print industry under extreme pressures and raised unprecedented challenges in such a short period of time, they have also presented opportunities and underlined the importance of our vision. This is even more pronounced when you factor in pressures on brand owners and retailers from consumers to be more sustainable and operate with the environment in mind.

To make good on this, we need to see more of the industry transition to a mindset that embraces the creation of integrated, digital operating environments. With this in mind, the BOBST stand at drupa 2024 went in a new direction to educate the market as to the importance of a digitalized and fully connected workflow. We sought to spread the word that there’s so much more to print than machinery and there is big value to be unlocked by implementing systems and solutions befitting today’s market. At the heart is BOBST Connect, our cloud-based platform that data flows from to empower businesses and their transition.

Presenting automation using the CARTONPACK

Was the message received?
Loud and clear. We asked ourselves, “How can we address pain points in the four industries we work in?”. The answer was proof points related to the four pillars of connectivity, automaton, digitalization and sustainability offered through our solutions. We used this to show how and where BOBST and its vision for the future can add tangible value to a printing business.

What we created was an inviting and enticing space with a real ‘wow’ factor. While there was minimal hardware, customers that might have expected to see machinery on our stand, have a demo, and then converse around their needs and investment plans, found the whole experience to be far more rewarding and valuable.

Some have started to digitalize their operations but are often not looking at the full process and how to close the loop. By taking them on a journey and spending perhaps 45-60 minutes in their company, we were able to cement our position as a supplier that understands their needs and can pave the way to value creation through greater utilization of existing assets, systems and data. Take energy, where consumption data per machine has not been easy to extract. BOBST Connect now features the capability to draw down data-rich information that allows you to see exactly how each machine is operating and better understand your entire environmental footprint. This is transformative and information converters have been crying out for. The latest updates to BOBST Connect put this at their fingertips.

This is just one example of where we can turn concepts into reality and show how this transformation can and will add value to a business. Commerciality remains paramount to it all and must go hand-in-hand with our vision for the future of the packaging industry.

At drupa 2024, we demonstrated that in buckets and showed that the future is already here. There is boundless potential for those who embrace the transition and transform their mindset and business.
 

BOBST