The open house hosted by international software manufacturer OneVision, focusing on the controversial and widely discussed topic "Industry 4.0 – Digitization and Automation of Print and Publishing Workflows", was met with lively participation and positive responses within the printing industry.

 

Regensburg. "The topic of Print 4.0 reflects the spirit of the times and OneVision seems to be optimally prepared for it. Automation is becoming more and more important with minimal or no errors in the editing of the data by the operator or user," summarized Markus Künne of Westermann Druck GmbH the open house event, which took place on May 16th and 17th in Regensburg. 50 representatives from 32 printing companies, magazine publishers, book printers, and newspaper publishers from the entire German-Austrian-Swiss region, joined the event in the headquarters of the internationally operating software developer.

Leading publishers took the opportunity to share experiences
Leading companies in their respective industries, such as Hubert Burda Medien, Bauer Media Group, Spiegel Publishing Group, Funke Media Group, Straubinger Tagblatt, the Badischen Neuesten Nachrichten, and the Ippen Publishing Group – represented by Verlag Dierichs and the Münchner Merkur – took the opportunity to learn more about the topic of digitization and automation in the printing industry. They were also able to exchange ideas with colleagues and software developers on this occasion. The large and leading companies were not the only ones to use this opportunity for exchange of ideas, but also a few smaller publishers and reproduction studios convinced themselves right on the spot of the wide range of possibilities which the flexible software solutions offer. Companies gained inspiration for the design and organization of their production workflows.

Challenges and opportunities through Print 4.0
The two-day open house program was the ideal platform for exchanging ideas and networking between participants in science, software development, end users, and prospective customers. After an introduction to the complex issue and conceptual delimitation by Professor Dr. Hoffmann-Walbeck, professor of applied computer science and prepress in print and media technology studies at the Hochschule der Medien in Stuttgart, a comprehensive case study from practice of workflow management systems and Workspace Pro was presented by Rainer Gelner. The Technical Director of Bosch-Druck GmbH clearly illustrated how Workspace Pro and the prepress suite, Asura, achieve a high degree of automation in the prepress process. With an overview of the new features in Workspace 17.1, which will be released in the coming days, and an outlook on future developments, OneVision’s Business Unit Manager for Workflow Management Systems, Peter Eis, complemented the official program.

 

All of the new ideas and inspiration were discussed during the evening’s event aboard the Crystal Princess, a Danube river cruise ship.