AP’s Brian Moore recently met Heidelberg’s chief technology officer, Dr Jürgen Rautert and Jörg Bauer, vice president of Prinect product management. He also saw the new Walldorf-Wiesloch press hall where the company is building its new very large format press
As chief technology officer at Heidelberg, Dr Jürgen Rautert (49) has been intimately involved with technology development for the company since he joined it in 1990.His experience includes project management during the development of the Speedmaster SM 52 series in the 1990s, and then overall responsibility for product development of all small and medium-format sheetfed offset presses
Rautert became head of development of the Speedmaster Business Unit in 1997 and just two years later, was appointed head of the Speedmaster Business Unit.
In 2000, he became overall head of the Sheetfed Business Unit and in 2001, head of the Prepress Solution Center.
By 2004, Rautert was also head of Postpress and that same year, he was made head of overall Research and Development, Production.
Labeled ‘a man to watch’ by many in the printing industry including some of his competitors, Rautert was also appointed to the Heidelberg management board in 2004, responsible for Engineering and Manufacturing. Since November 2006, he has been responsible for Products, Engineering and Manufacturing on the board.
Rautert has earned a very powerful position in a relatively short term at Heidelberg and is seen as something of a guru when it comes to product development.
But, he explains that press builders like Heidelberg cannot develop new machines in isolation from customers and the market; product enhancements and new technologies come as a response to market needs, he insists.
Printers the world over are struggling to keep their businesses profitable in the face of all sorts of competitive forces and Heidelberg’s mission is to deliver the tools that will help them to be successful in their businesses.
More and more says Rautert, Heidelberg is working with its customer base far beyond the supply and servicing of machines, adding workflow and other software tools as well as consultancy services to its product range.
But that doesn’t mean the market will see fewer new presses from Heidelberg in the future: during my visit to the company headquarters, I was taken to see the latest press hall built at the vast manufacturing facility in Wiesloch-Walldorf just minutes south of Heidelberg.
The manufacturing plant here is a city in its own right, with streets named, among others, after former Heidelberg CEOs and one very special one, Gutenbergstraße. Here, in great secrecy, Heidelberg has been quietly developing its new generation Speedmaster XL 145/162 machines. Though I was able to get close to one of the machines, a six-inch wall separated me from it – and my Heidelberg minders were anxious that I didn’t see it before its official unveiling on March 6 (see April AP for our report – with pictures – on the new XL 145/162 machines as well as Heidelberg’s increasing focus on packaging).
In the intensely competitive world of sheetfed offset press development and manufacture, Heidelberg researchers identified the large format sheetfed niche as one with interesting potential and, unlike many other market segments in sheetfed, significant unfulfilled demand. Rautert says Heidelberg found that 30 per cent of sheetfed sheets are being printed on 10 per cent of sheetfed presses, these being the larger format machines. Acknowledging that other press builders are equally interested in and entering this segment if they aren’t aready there, Rautert believes that Heidelberg’s high profile will help to enlarge the segment for all press manufacturers.
On the subject of existing press enhancements, Rautert says Heidelberg has and will continue to develop inline and other technologies which add value to print and help printers to differentiate their product and service offerings to customers, inline foiling being a successful recent example.
Software and services are also earning an increasing share of revenues for Heidelberg, as workflow evangelist, Jörg Bauer, vice president of Prinect product management was keen to point out.
Though print businesses often have similar hardware, be it in prepress, the pressroom or in finishing, the difference between profit – and sizeable profit at that – or a loss, is more often than not determined by how the print manager organises the workflow. Bauer’s message is that Prinect, Heidelberg’s complete workflow management system can make a huge difference.
Printect integrates traditionally separate areas of management, prepress, press and finishing into one system and being both modular and scaleable, can be as big as or as small an investment as the customer can afford.
Says Bauer, Prinect integrates and optimises workflow in the print shop all the way from management to production and from prepress to finishing and it doesn’t just talk to Heidelberg hardware in the process.
The finely tuned interaction of Prinect components can boost the efficiency of production workflows, offer greater process transparency and thereby accelerate the flow of jobs.
Prinect, says Bauer, can make a major contribution to helping print companies fully realise their potential for rationalisation and optimisation, thus enhancing the performance of the print shop and achieving greater profit margins.
