For the second time in succession, Heidelberg’s digital unit (HDU) has been honoured with the Capital Award in the core-business-related innovation category as one of Germany’s top digital labs.
For the fourth year running, experts from German management consultancy firm Infront Consulting and Germany’s Capital business magazine investigated the successes companies are achieving with digital labs.
This year’s focus was on innovations that have been successfully commercialised, with a particular spotlight on two areas – core-business-related innovation in a company’s specific area of competence, which expands existing business models on established markets, and non-core-business-related innovation outside a company’s specific area of competence, which replaces existing business models and unlocks new markets.
According to the company, the Print Media Industry Climate Report published by Heidelberg at the end of April 2020 was a key factor in this success. In particular, the award recognised the company’s ability to continue developing innovative projects, even during the current COVID-19 pandemic.
The Heidelberg Print Media Industry Climate Report provides a weekly update on printing volumes for the market segments of packaging and label printing and commercial printing based on global, objective real-time IIoT data.
Capital’s panel of judges commented, “Not only is the company helping to tackle the crisis with this tool. It can also make a name for itself outside this otherwise rather unremarkable sector.”
Heidelberg CEO Rainer Hundsdörfer said the Heidelberg Digital Unit has made a key contribution to the company’s digitisation strategy.
“By winning the Capital Award 2020, it has once again highlighted the possibilities of data and the practical customer benefits of digitisation solutions in our core business, especially in time of crisis,” he said.
“In addition to giving our customers and the company itself a better idea of the impact of the COVID-19 crisis, the results of our Climate Report also provide sales and service units with a starting point for overcoming it,” he adds.
The latest Climate Report evaluation showed how COVID-19 is affecting the sector around the globe.
There was a positive start to 2020, with print volumes significantly exceeding production than in the previous year. The extent to which print shops’ production volumes have been hit correlates closely with the country-specific infection rates and lockdown measures.
“While commercial printers work at a much-reduced capacity at the peak of the infection, packaging and labels are in above-average demand during this period. We are seeing that as the economic situation begins to return to normal, the printing industry is also starting to recover. Commercial printing is picking up again, while the considerable increase in the production of packaging and labels is coming to an end,” the report identified.
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