中文A room full of people talking about machines that talk back
There is a telling detail about HEIDELBERG’s SHIFT 2026 event: more than 300 specialists, executives, customers, partners, and industry experts showed up from nearly 30 countries to spend two days talking about software, data, and robots — not just presses. That is the clearest signal yet that the German press giant sees its future as much in code as in cast iron.
SHIFT 2026 positioned digitalisation as a central requirement for the future of print production. The agenda ran through AI-supported production planning, autonomous workflows, data ecosystems, robotics, the Jetfire 50 industrial digital press, and the growing use of AI agents in business and production. Real-world examples showed how print companies use connected systems and data-driven automation to cope with shorter runs, higher order volumes, and relentless margin pressure.
The customer benefit, not the demo
Jürgen Grimm, head of HEIDELBERG’s Prinect business unit and the company’s AI coordinator, was blunt about the priority: “For HEIDELBERG, the primary focus when using artificial intelligence is on tangible customer benefits.” That is the right instinct. Printers do not care about AI for its own sake; they care about whether it keeps the press running and the margins intact.
One example came from Schmid-Fehr AG, which uses Prinect Touch Free with the Jetfire 50 and a Speedmaster XL 75 to automate hybrid production as average job values decline. That combination — digital and offset under one automated roof — is the practical answer to the industry’s core headache: lots of small, low-value jobs that still have to be produced profitably.
Why hybrid still wins
HEIDELBERG also used its Home of Print in Wiesloch-Walldorf to demonstrate how software, presses, automation, robotics, and data management fit into one unified production environment. The point was not to show a single sexy machine but to show a system where each piece feeds the next. For a printer, that integration is the difference between buying a tool and building a factory that learns.
The margin pressure Grimm referenced is not hypothetical. Across the industry, rising material, energy, and labour costs sit on top of declining run lengths and shorter deadlines. The shops that thrive are the ones that turn those pressures into automated, data-rich workflows instead of leaning harder on people.
The honest part
There is a quiet admission buried in all this: AI in printing has moved from experiment to tool. Early hype centred on image generators and chatbots. The durable value turned out to be the boring stuff — predictive maintenance that stops a breakdown before it happens, inspection cameras that catch a colour drift in real time, scheduling that routes a job to the right press at the right moment.
HEIDELBERG’s bet is that the next wave of productivity comes from connecting everything: presses that report their own health, workflows that plan themselves, and robots that handle the dull bits. Whether every printer is ready for that is another question. Many still run islands of machinery with spreadsheets duct-taped between them.
The takeaway
SHIFT 2026 was less a product launch than a statement of direction. HEIDELBERG is betting that the press of the future is an intelligent node in a network, not a standalone machine. For printers deciding where to invest, the lesson is uncomfortable but clear: the competitive edge is increasingly in the data and automation around the press, not just the press itself.
The algorithm is moving onto the factory floor. The shops that learn to work with it will outlast the ones that don’t.
Source: INKISH.NEWS
