50 | GallusLegacy upgradesAlthough there is no more manufacturing at Gallus’ St Gallen site, there is an active retroft and used machinery refurbishment business. This gives Gallus customers a route to either buy second-hand press, sell or exchange their legacy equipment, or upgrade their existing kit.Among many examples of the latter displayed during the centenary event was an LED retroft kit for the RCS Frank Kropp, senior VP of research 330/430 press. Gallus Labelmaster Advanced & development, Heidelberg“The customer portal brings together all the current digital services and software products offered by Heidelberg”chain, automation and interconnectivity End (DFE) of the press is connected over on.turn from a cost saving into a necessity the Cloud to an IOT (Internet of Things) Retail expert Jack Strattem delivered for industry survival. The current business network. This makes possible a range of some fascinating insights into consumer strategy for manufacturers and converters services including remote press monitoring, behaviors that ultimately impact the labels is no longer sustainable,’ says Urbinati. predictive maintenance, automated color and packaging industries. ‘The Gallus Experience Center exists to management, substrate qualifcation and Firstly, post-Covid consumers are help the industry move toward a complete AI/machine learning to support the user showing a marked preference to use digital transformation. This is not just with optimal parameters for running the bricks and mortar shops if they know – by about an inkjet press, but a new, integrated equipment. interacting online - a product is defnitely way to think about our industry - a Kropp announced a new customer portal in stock. complete Cloud-based integration including to be launched in October which combines Similarly, consumers value speed and conventional equipment. And this needs these capabilities into one platform. convenience, which both rely on agile a new way to calculate cost – total cost The portal brings together all the supply chains, but at the same time of ownership. This will be measured by current digital services and software appreciate ‘slow delivery’ – for example increased sustainability, which means less products offered by Heidelberg. This enjoying the unboxing/wrapping experience waste and energy consumption, and by the includes performance monitoring, or help in setting a product up. Integration of software and hardware using predictive maintenance, workfow and job Secondly, there is a preference for APIs. Considering demographic change, management and purchase of consumables spending on luxury goods, with consumers we can then make our industry sexy and and parts. Gallus will be integrated into the compensating by using discount retailers or competitive with the service sector.’ portal at a future point. cutting their spending elsewhere. Urbinati stressed that the Gallus Thirdly, consumers want sustainability Experience Center is an initiative for Idea exchange but are not prepared to pay extra for it. ‘So the entire industry, including Gallus’ Adding to the exchange of ideas at the sustainability needs to be built in, but at competitors. ‘We want the whole industry Gallus centenary event was a presentation zero extra cost,’ says Stratten. to participate in this process. We already from AI expert and consultant Katie King, Covid has had other interesting side have more than 50 partner companies’. who looked at where AI is being deployed, effects on consumer behavior. ‘For example, Esko, for example, has a facility on-site its potential and its limitations. Despite the QR code was pretty much dead before to work on seamless integration with the much gloom-mongering, it appears AI is Covid. But suddenly every restaurant was Heidelberg digital ecosystem. The company following the same pattern as previous printing them on their menus to order food. has installed a CDI Crystal 4835 fexo industrial revolutions, making some roles Now consumers understand how this works plate imager alongside Asahi’s Kasei latest redundant while creating different roles and QR codes are ubiquitous.’ water-wash plate processor (nominated for further up the value chain. Stratten concludes that a lively a Label Industry Sustainability Award). The key use of AI, says King, is to analyze interactive mix of online and offine is the Frank Kropp, head of R&D at Heidelberg, Big Data, both historical and in real-time, future for retailing, with consumers less emphasized the group’s strong partnership and present actionable options to brand loyal and more open to innovations with Gallus. Heidelberg is providing deep operators and management teams. that make them feel valued. expertise in industrial digital printing and AI had massively sped up the ‘And more brands want to go direct drying technology along with a worldwide development of Covid vaccines, for to consumers – often in partnership support ecosystem, Prinect workfow and example, by being able to spot patterns with physical shops - using personalized the new customer portal (see below). that human analysis alone would never packaging and smart, connected printing.’ Kropp said the ultimate goal of both have seen. companies is ‘autonomous printing where King also warned of AI’s limitations: it The Gallus One digital press can the boundaries between the machine does not know ‘the truth’, it cannot make be seen at Labelexpo Europe 2023. control and the workfow are dissolved’. creative decisions and it is dependent upon For more information, visit In practice, this means the Digital Front the limitations of the dataset it is trained www.labelexpo-europe.comlabelsandlabeling.com