Lucky last day…it’s been 8 days of treading the halls, meeting, greeting and listening to sales pitch after sales pitch but somehow I find myself in a mild state of panic that I haven’t seen enough. Truth is you could spend three weeks here and still not see it all. Even if you did see it, I doubt the brain could absorb it all. Not much I can do about it now except tick a few last items off my must see list.

Back to hall 1 where Soeren has booked three demos for me. An overview of Prepress, Pressroom and Postpress Manager followed by Scheduling and finally Pressroom Reporting.

Heidelberg has adopted an approach to their workflow which is logical. They view their modules as a ‘cockpit’ for the user. Equipment from each department is connected to their MIS and the user can literally see everything as it occurs in the workflow. They have some wonderful views of active jobs where you can see at a glance how far the job has progressed in any department. Even to how many sides have been approved against the number of sides in the job. There is no question as to where the job is at and when the entire workflow is Heidelberg it works really well.

The first demonstration was a bit of an anti-climax for me in that the post press connectivity was not adequately demonstrated. I have seen several examples of prepress and pressroom connectivity in action in Das Druckhaus and even our own connection to the CD74. However with Postpress we had mixed success at best when we attempted connection to the folders and stitcher using Heidelberg’s FCS100 and I had been looking forward to seeing a vastly improved product on show at Drupa.

The scheduling module was neat in that jobs are displayed in schedule order at the machine console but there are better planning boards available. In fairness this is a brand new addition to the Prinect suite of products and I am sure it will improve quickly with user feedback.

The Pressroom reporting module really did impress. It was an elegant illustration of the benefits of a fully integrated workflow. The pressroom reports were well presented with impression, productivity and trend reports available. Most impressive were the colour and density reports fed back to the system by ImageControl. The same reporting extends to connected postpress equipment and becomes a powerful analysis tool.

Soeren doggedly chased down the marketing manager for postpress workflow in order to get me a proper demonstration of its functionality and I must say that in the end I was pleased with what I saw. Heidelberg have adapted their post press approach to focus more on timesheet and shop floor data capture rather than on automating set up. Most folders and stitchers are fast to set up anyway and the real benefit to a business is in recording job actuals. They have even developed their own data terminal for older disconnected machines. It shows real promise and I look forward to exploring the possibilities in more detail when they set it up in the Melbourne showroom.

I had a look at the Prinergy workflow at Kodak. They have a nice range of web based tools for customer approval and even an online shopfront. One feature which stood out for me was their ‘Rule Based Automation’ which is a VB scripting tool embedded within the workflow. RBA creates endless possibilities for automating tasks throughout their system.

The real bonus for me at Kodak was meeting an old friend Nick Benkovic. Nick was the Preps guru when we first installed prepress and helped a lot in getting the best out of UpFront and Preps at Vega. Nick introduced me to the Marketing manager for UpFront who offered to facilitate talks with their programmers. I am hoping this will lead to further improvements to our imposition library.

I finished the day at the KBA stand where Patrick showed me some very nice improvements to the Logotronic software. The standout was that the job report from Densitronic is now available through the Logotronic system. I have spoken to Lithec as well and will arrange an upgrade (based on price) as soon as I get back.

There is so much more I have seen at Drupa that I simply have not had the time to document for you but I posted 7kg of brochures today and will be happy to talk about it all when I return on Friday next week.