Printing Digitalization: From Connectivity Gaps to Edge Intelligence and Industry Collaboration

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

Digitalization challenges and requirements in the printing industry

Printing rarely stands alone. It links to whole-line production demands in post-press, including flexible packaging, books and periodicals, and colour cartons, and it connects graphic and image processing, printing and packaging equipment, and information integration. The sector therefore spans digitalization across several dimensions and requires collaboration. Figure 1 presents a panorama of the printing industry.

Figure 1: Panorama of the printing industry

1. Getting the mindset right for digital transformation

Printing companies should not be distracted by the market hype. Digital transformation is a hot topic, yet companies must avoid “digitalization for digitalization’s sake” and should not rush into system building before clarifying their business strategy. Transformation starts with a change in the business model. Because printing is one stage in the customer’s product chain, it must become more responsive to customer demand while protecting profitability and improving quality, shortening delivery cycles, and handling new orders.

1. The missing link: effective connectivity

The most common obstacle in digitalization is genuine connectivity. Printing and packaging equipment is often highly advanced, using internationally leading machines, and ERP/MES platforms frequently come from globally known vendors. Even so, shop-floor connectivity remains fragmented. Work orders are often printed and issued, or sent over a computer network to the machine, where operators set parameters manually; full end-to-end connectivity is not achieved. The root cause is that digitalization has not truly opened interoperability between ERP/MES and machines. As a result, digital design, operations management, advanced machine control, and line operation systems remain information islands. This issue has still not been effectively resolved.

1. Digital integration is short of vertical-industry depth

Printing is a relatively vertical sub-market. Its industrial scale differs from automotive, electronics manufacturing, or even process industries. As a result, few service providers offer digital systems tailored to this segment, and some systems must be built by manufacturers themselves or adapted from general-market operating systems. Domestic industrial software is also limited—for example, software for colour management and digital operations in printing and packaging plants. This contributes to a lack of unified standards and operations among digital systems from international vendors, a fairly common situation.

Large overseas players do have professional systems, but these are usually supplied by a small number of major OEMs. Whole-plant management software based on the XJDF specification, for instance, has been built by only some large vendors over decades. For domestic companies that started late and operate at smaller scale, this is out of reach, because it demands not only leading electromechanical control and processes but also substantial market support and industry talent development.

Analyzing digital transformation needs in the printing industry

Two main forces drive digital transformation. One is the top-down push from ICT vendors, focused on platform building. ICT providers generally supply tools; they offer a platform on which users must develop their own applications, such as defining logistics and information flows. Because ICT vendors often lack shop-floor insight, they can provide tools only, leaving configuration to enterprises with information-technology capabilities. The other force comes from OT—automation and machinery vendors advancing digitalization bottom-up.

As an automation vendor, B&R has deep experience in printing control technology, covering control for various printing presses as well as communication connectivity, digital analysis, and application capabilities within control systems. This puts OT vendors closer to the shop floor and gives them a better understanding of real needs. This article now looks at how printing companies can approach digitalization from that perspective.

1. Unified, standardized semantic connectivity

First, industrial communication is not only about real-time control; it continues to expand. In particular, the integration of the OPC UA semantic interoperability specification now enables automation vendors to provide data exchange between machine and machine, and between machines and management systems.

Second, information modelling matters. OPC UA basic modelling includes unified specifications for structuring information, along with capabilities for data calls and method integration, and it also offers industry information models. MTConnect serves machine tools and PackML serves packaging, but in printing, specifications such as JDF/XJDF have not yet been defined using OPC UA. Such a specification may need to be developed by the whole printing industry, or jointly by local printing machinery makers and users.

Communication profile specifications matter because they create a common standard among digital operations management, machine builders, and digital design. That allows faster engineering connections in information integration and data applications, reducing engineering costs. Otherwise, every company’s digitalization path becomes a bespoke “engineering project.” Without replicability, the whole industry will struggle to implement digitalization, or face extremely high costs, which in turn slows progress.

In addition, the industry still has limited understanding of information models such as OPC UA. Industry organizations need to promote them and work with international bodies to develop autonomous specifications suited to local characteristics.

1. Edge implementation from the shop-floor perspective

B&R control systems can deliver digitalization capabilities, as shown in Figure 2. These include:

Figure 2: Digitalization capabilities of a machine control system

1. Machine connectivity: CPUs usually have various communication modules, so they can connect to different devices on site, then send data to the controller and store it in an OPC UA Server. This service-oriented architecture (SoA) allows clients from horizontal devices and host systems to access data, and also supports mobile access from phones.
2. Energy and equipment efficiency data collection: this covers machine energy consumption, shift energy consumption, real-time OEE, and line OEE statistics—critical for production companies evaluating efficiency.
3. Predictive maintenance: maintenance based on condition monitoring. Vibration and temperature signals can be collected and placed in the controller, or trained in the cloud and deployed locally. This chain can be connected.
4. Remote diagnostics and maintenance: SiteManager is a technology for building “secure” remote maintenance locally. It can transmit data through a secure VPN and enable remote machine diagnostics and commissioning via ubiquitous networks and remote desktop technology. This is highly convenient for OEMs and plant maintenance engineers.

Automation vendors such as B&R have moved their controllers beyond the traditional PLC’s logic-control role. In the mapp portfolio, Tweet lets machines send alarm or event text messages or emails to operating systems or operators; mappEnergy tracks energy; mappOEE tracks real-time machine efficiency; mappDATA accesses databases; and mappAudit enables audit trails for traceable records of quality-related data.

Figure 3 shows a typical edge intelligence system architecture based on a control technology platform. B&R industrial PCs with Hypervisor technology can provide edge intelligence for printing plants. In digital applications such as predictive maintenance, parameter optimization, and scheduling, data can be collected via OPC UA, and an OPC UA/MQTT cloud connection can be established for cloud training. Models can be deployed to a local PC, where inference is performed by the PC processor on Windows or Linux, while the RTOS ensures real-time synchronization and logic tasks.

Figure 3: Edge intelligence system architecture

Figure 4 shows the digitalization capabilities of a printing plant built with capabilities from control system vendors such as B&R. It covers several areas:

Figure 4: Overall digitalization architecture

1. On the machine design side, MATLAB/Simu

link modelling and simulation can connect with B&R’s control system design platform Automation Studio, allowing digital design to link with control for co-simulation. A second scenario has not yet been verified: digital JDF files can be read and parsed in XML format. At this stage, this can be done through a controller read task, parsing the work order by program and sending it to the machine, automatically combining with the recipe system to achieve automatic operation. Of course, the workflow still needs human confirmation to prevent errors.

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

Digitalization in the printing industry requires collaboration

To achieve digital transformation, the printing industry needs collaboration among all parties and, under the organization of associations and standards committees, a feasible overall industry plan. This requires coordinated progress. Figure 5 illustrates the industry ecosystem. The following suggestions are offered for each party:

Figure 5: Industry ecosystem collaboration issues in digital transformation

First, printing and packaging companies, including end users, must be clear about their own digitalization needs. This is not only for upgrading their operations management; it also means setting specifications for upstream machine builders, system integrators, and information integration providers, so that all parties share a common direction.

Second, based on industry demand, associations such as printing industry associations and standards committees, together with cross-sector organizations including the OPC Foundation, automation industry communication profile bodies, and digital workshop standardization organizations, should jointly develop industry specifications for printing. Through industry collaboration, they can create digital development guides and guidance, advancing the industry as a whole.

Third, machine builders and automation vendors should collaborate, combining digital experience, technology, and methods from other fields with the realities of the printing industry to develop solutions focused on quality, cost, and efficiency improvement.

In summary, digitalization in the printing industry cannot be achieved overnight, nor can it be driven by any single party; it requires joint efforts from manufacturers across the industry.

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