Artificial intelligence in prepress. A pipe dream or a forward-looking toolkit?
The possibilities in (packaging) prepress through the use of artificial intelligence.
As an innovative company, the SAUERESSIG Group has been dealing with the topics of Machine Learning and Computer Vision for some time. As part of the eighth Packaging Printing Expert Meeting, hosted by Innoform, our SAUERESSIG packaging expert Ingo Beutler gave an inspiring talk on the future of artificial intelligence in prepress. But what is the potential behind AI in print and media production?
The SAUERESSIG Group believes that new ways need to be found to make the Design2Print process more efficient. Packaging printing still depends on the technical expertise of the employees. From job creation to prepress production, a deep understanding of specifications and graphic data preparation is required. The experts take over the repro preparation in prepress and turn initial sketches and ideas into printable data. However, a company’s dependence on experienced staff is a sticking point, because training them is a lengthy process and staff absences and the like often lead to inconsistencies within the job or missed deadlines. Nevertheless, it is becoming increasingly important in print and media production from packaging printing to deal with the topic of AI in prepress in order to be able to effectively exploit the potential for its application in one’s own company.
A huge amount of information and data is generated during the prepress stage of any packaging printing operation – much of it created by employees with expertise and experience. The goal of AI in packaging printing is to analyze this information and graphic data and use the insights gained to develop an AI-based algorithm. In this way, business processes can be extensively supported by automated actions and recommendations in the future, and the reliance on expertise on the part of employees will be reduced.
AI-supported applications are already used internally in the entire Design2Print process. With the development of the cLynx product group, the SAUERESSIG Group has become an expert in computer vision technology. This technology is the key to success in extracting information from graphical data and making it available to AI. By feeding the AI with historical data, instructions and actions are trained for the entire prepress process. In the future, AI in print and media production will provide comprehensive support. This will drastically reduce complexity in the company and the dependence on the technical expertise of the employees on site can thus be dissolved.
Although most of the targeted and already implemented developments are currently focused on internal applications of the SAUERESSIG and SGK Group, there is a large market potential of these technologies for external users.
The SAUERESSIG Group is still at the beginning of the journey of AI in print and media production. But the unprecedented opportunity to revolutionize processes through the use of AI in prepress is already emerging.
