Anthony Thirlby has been described as someone who understands more about automating print businesses than anyone else in the world. As the former managing director of ESP Colour Hub in Swindon, UK, he set astonishing productivity benchmarks with the company’s Heidelberg Speedmaster equipment: for example, completing 697 makereadies in a 162-hour week with a net running speed of 17,013 sph and average makeready time of 3 minutes and 41 seconds. At the time, Heidelberg said that these numbers represented the shortest makereadies and the highest net output ever achieved on its presses.

As a consultant, Thirlby advises other printers that job standardization and continuous cost analysis are the keys to efficient and profitable operation. Profitability, he maintains, shouldn’t be measured only a job-by-job or press-by-press basis: it is something that every cost center in the plant must contribute to if the operation is to be certain that it is actually making money. 

Now, Thirlby is advancing his ideas under the banner of Prinect, Heidelberg’s portfolio of workflow software solutions. At drupa 2016, it was learned that Heidelberg has appointed him to lead the Prinect business and to evangelize the company’s brand of workflow to its worldwide customer base. In this interview, Thirlby explains how he will shape the message and why he feels confident printers will listen to it.