A market share of 43% means that manroland web systems were once again at the pinnacle of the industry in 2016. However the company from Augsburg is not resting on its laurels. Along with the continued expansion in the service sector, which was presented at drupa 2016, the Augsburg company has invested extensively over the past few years in accessing new fields of business, like digital or packaging printing, as well as in comprehensive automation solutions.

Service of the highest order

Service has been newly defined at manroland web systems over a longer period. All innovations from this sector are targeted directly towards achieving cost savings and benefits in productivity and flexibility, which means a clear focus on customer benefits. manroland web systems’ Service sector comprises the company’s entire service and  service provision offering. This means holistic support from consultation on optimal spare and wear parts in original quality, to training, classic repair service and on to maintenance and servicing of the printing systems.

This does not only apply to users of manroland web systems technology and products. manroland’s service is expressly targeted towards the entire branch. It is also not just concerned with moving presses and re-configurations; manroland web systems have successfully opened a new business field in upgrading and retrofitting on competitor presses. In 2016, for the first time, manroland web systems started garnering attention for retrofits on competitor’s presses. A complete E-retrofit was carried out on a Goss press in the USA: a highlight, which will be followed by many others.

However service for third party presses is not the only successful product in this new service orientation: the attractive 24/7 online ordering platform for spare and wear parts, the manroland web STORE, was treated to a complete re-launch in 2016. The platform is now even more user friendly and more functional. That is why it could register an immense growth in customers and total turnover in the first few months after the re-launch. It is planned for the middle of 2017, that the manroland web STORE be built up to an even broader based marketplace and benchmark for the branch. This provides the opportunity for sub-suppliers to place their products here and offer them to a broad range of customers via a secure platform, internationally. This platform with the very promising moniker of MARKET-X will also be extended in a subsequent step to include a section offering used parts.

Continuous change is showing no sign of letting up, even in the service branch. This is why manroland web systems is now also offering comprehensive service contracts covering all the important tasks for the entire life cycle of a press, “Service Next Generation”. The original manufacturer service is one of the best on the market and uniquely offers an extensive Portfolio of service provision including comprehensive support for every customer. The services are structured in three business fields: Solutions, Support und Store.

Solutions mean tailor made responses, which include customer specific concepts for Upgrades and Retrofits, designed to make all printing systems fit for the future.

Support means classic Service and incorporates comprehensive support, from the consultation about the optimal spare and wear parts in original quality, training, classic repair services and right on up to all-encompassing maintenance and servicing of the printing system.

Store stands for an especial USP of manroland’s Service: the manroland web STORE. This is where spare and wear parts in original quality can be ordered at anytime to ensure a consistently high press performance, and that at markedly more economical prices.

So customers have a partner for everything. This saves costs and ensures the highest possible level of planning security.

Flexible packaging printing

In order to further and successfully delight customers with innovations and to open up new business fields with potential for growth, manroland web systems invest a significant portion of their revenues back into Research and Development. For example in packaging printing: the worldwide packaging printing market is changing on account of growing market differentiation, convenience enhancement, variable packaging sizes and entry into new markets. The annual growth in the complete packaging market is being estimated at 3.5% across the board of all product categories, and when viewed individually for the “flexible packaging” sector, this rises to 4%. This growth demands modern, highly automated printing systems, which enable quick, efficient and economical production of the relevant packaging units. Therefore, manroland web systems decided to enter into the packaging printing market and were able to announce the first contract already in 2016 with an internationally active group. The newly conceived, highly innovative VARIOMAN is designed as a Hybrid press Offset/Gravure printing and will print on foils. The entry into this new business field positions manroland web systems anew for the future.

Digital Finishing Solutions

In the past years, manroland web systems have successfully transferred their practical competence into the digital printing market. Using this internal Know-how was instrumental in the development of the digital printing finishing equipment modules FoldLine and FormerLine.

The individual print runs for books are shrinking steadily. This leads to considerable cost pressures on web offset book production systems and sheet fed presses on which books can be printed. On small print runs, digital printing can not only keep pace with costs, but it can even generate, sometimes significant, savings potentials when the machine is correctly set up with Workflow management and Finishing Systems. A modern digital printing system in combination with the finishing equipment solutions FoldLine and FormerLine from manroland web systems, produces complete blocks of books in a continuous system, when necessary with pre-adhesion. This means significant costs linked with conventional book production are avoided. Additionally complete systems with flexible solutions like Offline/Nearline resp. complete Inline concepts, can be provided and integrated.

Thanks to the small and very small runs that digital printing enables, production on-demand has been made possible, whereby costs for logistics, warehousing and over-production are spared. Books produced by digital printing can thereby be produced flexibly and extremely quickly and delivered directly to the reader. “Ready to deliver” within two days is reality in digital printing. Therefore the digitally printed book meets all pre-conditions to be successfully compared to conventional book production and even eBooks.

Workflow total

And there’s more: manroland web systems is a pioneer in many printing halls with its complete workflow solutions, and is in demand worldwide when it comes to workflow efficiency and maximum productivity. In order to generate additional revenues and to ensure full production capacities, ever more diverse products, sometimes even personalised products, must be produced on the press. The profit-making factor for the production is the optimisation of the set up times on the press as well as the automation of the preceding steps (Job creation and impositioning). This is taken on by the newly developed, trail blazing software module from manroland: “MasterQ” for job scheduling and the complementary module “Imposer” for automatic imposition. This achieves a central administration for the printing jobs; product optimised sorting as well as a fully automated dynamic imposition of the job. During development, great emphasis is laid on taking each component involved in production into account, thereby ensuring the opportunity to evaluate the production data during the subsequent reporting phase.

In the future the Software and Workflow solutions for a completed networking of the entire printing hall will even allow offset systems to be integrated. This enables an efficient production atmosphere of mixed operations in which offset and digital printing can be integrated in one single production run. As Offset and Digital printing are in many ways complementary to each other, manroland web systems provide for the coupling of the production systems in a superordinate solution; MasterQ takes on the organisation.

From the viewpoint of manroland web systems, conventional Offset printing is not just completed and indeed enhanced by digital technology but the technologies have grown together more and more in the form of hybrid production systems. This step will have numerous consequences in the areas of Job scheduling, Job definition, Job management and preparation. Hybrid Systems can only be efficiently operated when a central system like MasterQ can administrate them.

Function oriented automation

Know-how is strategically being further developed in the area of automation for other systems. The highly modern and continually improved Workflow and Software solutions for all business areas demonstrate this excellently as everything which is possible in digital printing also functions naturally in web offset or packaging printing. Permanent accesses to the newest Software developments are being provided in license contracts for printing houses. This type of practically oriented solution helps the customer to remain competitive, provides USPs and enables the development of new business models. This involves continuous function oriented automation to ensure the customer becomes even more efficient and optimisation is achieved through targeted pre-settings. This saves time, effort and costs while also improving quality.

And in this regard manroland web systems has been thinking ahead. For years now the Augsburg based company has used the data gathered from the presses through PECOM-X, in order to analyse the productions of their customers, recognise interruption factors and sources of faults and thereby to optimise the production system. Now they are taking it one step further.

Predictive Maintenance – Maintellisense

Industry 4.0 has initiated the fourth industrial revolution. Modern information and communication technology as well as production technologies are melting together into one step in the value chain. The challenge for medium sized German companies in the mechanical engineering and plant manufacturing sectors lies in reducing the visions of Industry 4.0 to realisable development steps, the benefits of which are tangible to the entire company and which are also monetarily quantifiable.

Automation solutions at manroland web systems have always been an integral part of their products and performance. The future will be additionally preoccupied with predictive maintenance. Down times for a printing press cost money, and over-cautious maintenance does too. Modern technology should help that wear and spare parts are exchanged as seldom as possible, but always at the right time. As a press producer, manroland web systems have data and competences available to support customers worldwide in this aspect and thereby to provide an even more efficient service. “Big data” will become “smart data”.

This strategic initiative, which manroland web systems have developed for precisely this reason, carries the name “Maintellisense”. A newly created word carrying the meanings of Maintenance, Intelligence and Sense and simultaneously meeting the challenge of efficiently combining these elements in the interest of the customers and creating practical solutions for the market.

(http://www.manroland-web.com)