Heidelberg, a German manufacturer of printing presses and printing technologies, is adding a new feature to its digital portal. Called Heidelberg AI Performance Chat, this tool allows Print Shop Analytics users to ask questions directly about their production data and automatically generate tables, charts, and analyses.
Launched about four years ago, Print Shop Analytics enables print shops to track key performance indicators in real time, such as Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), productivity, makeready times, and waste levels. This data is also accessible on tablets or smartphones via the Insights app, which, according to the German manufacturer, is the tool most frequently used by its customers. Until now, access to this information was limited to dashboards, filters, and predefined reports.
Instead of navigating through dashboards, users of AI Performance Chat can ask their questions directly and receive answers in the form of tables, charts, or comments. AI Performance Chat can, for example, compare the performance of multiple presses, analyze performance gaps between teams, or track the evolution of a metric over a given period.
"With Heidelberg AI Performance Chat, we're making it much more intuitive to leverage production data. Our customers can ask exactly the questions that matter to them in their day-to-day work and get the answers they need right away." , summarizes Jürgen Grimm, software manager at Heidelberg.
Among the pilot users, Marcel Willnow of the German printing company LUC Medienhaus says he uses the tool to prepare for quarterly meetings or shareholder meetings. "I don't just need numbers; I also need context. In the past, this often took several hours. With Heidelberg AI Performance Chat, a single query is now all it takes to get exactly the information I need, along with a clear explanation." , he says.
As for Christoph Affentranger, CEO of the Swiss printing company Printex, he says: "I'm using Heidelberg AI more and more often, whether for troubleshooting, calibration, or as a day-to-day support tool. Having a solution like this makes my job much easier."
AI Performance Chat is available to all Print Shop Analytics customers and supports more than 18 languages.
