The Path to Digital Transformation in the Printing Industry

Song Huazhen, Technical Communication Manager, B&R Industrial Automation (China) Co., Ltd.

Digitalization challenges and needs in the printing industry

Printing usually does not exist independently; it also includes whole-line production needs for postpress such as flexible packaging, books and periodicals, and colour boxes. This involves digitalized design (graphics and image processing), printing and packaging equipment, and information integration. The whole industry includes digitalization and cooperation needs across multiple dimensions. The panorama of the printing industry is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1 Panorama of the printing industry

1. Awareness issues in digital transformation

For printing enterprises, it is essential not to be swayed by the environment. Digital transformation is a very hot topic, but as enterprises in the industry they must avoid falling into "digitalization for digitalization's sake," and must not blindly consider building systems; instead they should have a clear understanding of their own business strategy. Digital transformation is first of all a change in the enterprise's business model; and since the printing industry is one link in the user's product, digital transformation must give them the ability to respond to this customer demand, and amid such change they must also maintain high profitability, as well as quality improvement, shorter delivery cycles and the ability to respond to customers' new orders.

1. Lack of effective connectivity

A fairly common problem encountered in implementing digitalization is genuine connectivity. We can see that printing and packaging equipment usually reaches a very advanced level, with internationally leading machinery adopted, and ERP/MES usually comes from the world's best-known vendors, yet the connectivity of the work level is still in an isolated-island state. For example, work orders are usually issued by printing, or sent to the machine via the computer network, with personnel setting the parameters—true full connectivity has not been achieved. This situation is fairly common because digitalization has not truly and effectively opened up the interoperability connection between ERP/MES and the machines; therefore, although there is digital design, operations management and advanced machine control and line operation systems, they remain information islands. This phenomenon has not yet truly been effectively resolved.

1. Lack of digitalization integration with vertical industry characteristics

The printing industry is a fairly vertical sub-market; its industrial scale is unlike that of the automotive industry, electronics manufacturing or even the process industries, and therefore there are not many service providers offering effective digitalization systems for this sub-market, which means some digitalization systems have to be built by the manufacturers themselves, or operating systems modified by general-market service providers are used. In addition, the lack of domestic industrial software, such as software for colour and digital operations of printing and packaging plants, has also led to a lack of unified standards and operations in digitalization systems from international vendors—a fairly common phenomenon.

While large foreign companies do have professional systems, these are usually provided by a small number of large OEMs; for example, management software for the whole printing plant based on the XJDF specification has only been built up by some large vendors over their decades of development history. For domestic enterprises that started late and are small in scale, none of this is achievable, because it requires not only leading electromechanical control and processes but also substantial market support and the cultivation of industry talent.

Analysis of digital transformation needs in the printing industry

On how to advance digital transformation, there are two main driving forces in the market: one is the "top-down" push built by ICT vendors, whose focus is on building "platforms." Because ICT providers are usually tool-type providers, what they deliver is a platform on which users must develop their own applications—for example, defining logistics and information flows—and ICT vendors still lack awareness of the shop floor, so they can only provide tools, leaving it to enterprises with informatization capabilities to configure systems themselves. The other direction comes from OT, i.e. automation and machinery vendors pushing "bottom-up" digitalization themselves.

As an automation vendor, B&R is a company with very deep accumulation in the field of printing control technology, including the control of various printing presses as well as the communication connectivity, digital analysis and application capabilities of control systems themselves, which gives OT vendors an advantage: being closer to the shop floor and understanding its needs better. Here we expand from this perspective to introduce how printing enterprises should achieve digitalization.

1. Unified and standardized semantic connectivity

First, industrial communication not only handles real-time control but is also continuously expanding; in particular, the integration of the OPC UA semantic interoperability specification allows automation vendors today to provide data exchange between machine and machine and between machine and management systems.

Second, there is the capability for information modelling. OPC UA's basic modelling includes unified specifications for the structured definition of information, as well as the ability to call data and integrate methods, and it also has industry information models. Examples include MTConnect for machine tools and PackML for packaging, but for printing, JDF/XJDF and the like have not yet adopted the OPC UA specification for definition. This is a specification that may need to be defined by the entire printing industry, or jointly by local printing machinery makers and users.

The significance of communication profile specifications lies in enabling a unified specification among digital operations management, machine builders and digital design, so that engineering connections can be made quickly in information integration and data application, reducing engineering costs; otherwise, every enterprise's digitalization path will be an "engineering project." Such an approach lacking replicability will ultimately make it hard for the whole industry to achieve digitalization or make it extremely costly, which in turn hinders the efficiency of its realization.

In addition, the industry has relatively little understanding of information models such as OPC UA; industry organizations need to promote them, and to work with international organizations to jointly develop autonomous specifications with local characteristics.

1. Edge implementation from the perspective of the shop floor

The digitalization capabilities that B&R control systems can provide are shown in Figure 2 and include the following aspects:

Figure 2 Digitalization capabilities of a machine control system

1. Machine connectivity: because the CPU usually has various communication modules, it can connect to different devices on site, then send data to the controller and store it in an OPC UA Server. This SoA architecture—service-oriented architecture—allows Clients from horizontal devices and host systems to access it, and also supports access from mobile terminals such as phones.
2. Collection of energy and equipment efficiency data, including machine energy consumption, shift energy consumption, real-time OEE and line OEE statistics, which is crucial for production enterprises in evaluating efficiency.
3. Predictive maintenance—maintenance based on condition monitoring—can be achieved by collecting vibration and temperature signals and placing them in the controller, or by training in the cloud and deploying locally; this chain can be opened up.
4. Remote diagnostics and maintenance capability: SiteManager is a technology for locally building "secure" remote maintenance; it can provide data transmission via a secure VPN and realize remote machine diagnostics and commissioning through ubiquitous networks and remote desktop technology. This is very convenient for OEMs and plant maintenance engineers.

For automation vendors like B&R, their controllers have gone beyond the traditional PLC's logic control capability: the Tweet function in their mapp package can have machines send alert or event text messages or emails to operating systems or operators, mappEnergy can count energy, mappOEE can count real-time machine operating efficiency, mappDATA can access databases, and mappAudit can implement audit trails, thereby keeping traceable records of quality-related data.

Figure 3 shows a typical edge intelligence system architecture based on a control technology platform; B&R's industrial PC using Hypervisor technology can provide edge intelligence for printing plants. In digital applications, problems such as predictive maintenance, parameter optimization and scheduling can be addressed through OPC UA data collection, with an OPC UA/MQTT cloud data connection established for cloud training; models can be deployed locally by being downloaded to the local PC, and local inference can be performed by the PC's processor based on Windows or Linux, while the RTOS guarantees real-time synchronization and logic tasks.

Figure 3 Edge intelligence system architecture

Figure 4 shows the digitalization capabilities of a printing plant built with the capabilities provided by control system vendors such as B&R. It includes several aspects:

Figure 4 Overall digitalization architecture

1. For machine design, MATLAB/Simu

link's modelling and simulation can be connected with B&R's control system design platform Automation Studio, so that digital design can connect to control for co-simulation. The second case has not yet been verified, namely that digital JDF files can be read in XML format and parsed; at this stage this can be achieved by a controller read task, parsing the work order through a program and sending it to the machine, automatically combining with the recipe system to achieve automatic operation. Of course, the workflow needs personnel confirmation to avoid errors.

1. OPC UA communication connectivity: OPC UA can provide not only work order tasks but also various information models such as vision and robotics, AutoID entry of raw material barcodes, and logistics and warehousing information integration, including interaction between controllers and with the cloud.

Digitalization in the printing industry requires collaboration

To achieve digital transformation, all parties in the printing industry need to collaborate, and under the organization of associations and standards committees jointly formulate a feasible overall industry plan; this is work that needs to be advanced as a whole. The industry ecosystem is shown in Figure 5; below are suggestions on the work of each party:

Figure 5 Industry ecosystem collaboration issues in digital transformation

First, printing and packaging enterprises, including end users, need clarity about their own digitalization needs. These are not only for the digital upgrading of their own operations management level, but also include putting forward specifications to upstream machine builders, system integrators and informatization integrators, so that there is a direction for joint effort.

Second, on the basis of industry needs, associations such as printing industry associations and standards committees, together with cross-sector bodies such as the OPC Foundation, automation industry communication profile and digital workshop standardization organizations, should jointly develop industry specifications for the printing industry; through industry collaboration they can formulate digital development guides and guidance for the industry, thereby advancing the overall development of the industry.

Third, machine builders and automation vendors should collaborate, combining digital experience, technology and methods from other fields with the actual situation of the printing industry to develop solutions dedicated to improving quality, cost and efficiency.

In summary, the digitalization of the printing industry cannot be achieved overnight, nor can it be advanced by any single party; it requires the joint efforts of the industry's manufacturers.

——This article is reprinted from China Packaging Network (pack.cn). Original link: http://news.pack.cn/show-378249.html