TRANSFORMING OFFSET PRINTING WITH DIGITAL TWINS AND AI: INSIGHTS FROM RESEARCH INITIATIVES

The manufacturing industry has a long tradition in the European Union, being one of the key employers providing jobs for highly skilled and qualified staff. Despite this, the sector is currently facing challenges related to global competition and rising costs, leading to declining profit margins. Additionally, companies are required to meet new environmental initiatives, demanding an ambitious voluntary commitment effort from their side, which has been proven to be difficult to implement. At the same time, manufacturing companies generate vast amounts of unstructured data daily yet struggle to leverage this data for supply chain optimization. This problem is especially noticeable in situations when there are many semi-structured data sources, like the ones found in offset printing operations (images, sensor data, etc.), typically leading to the creation of data silos storage and inefficiencies. Thus, a systematic approach is needed to optimize the process of receiving, combining, and analyzing data, which can, in turn, promote the creation of innovative business models based on manufacturing data. Similarly, the usage of a digital twin in production offers several advantages, primarily enhancing productivity, quality and cost efficiency. This paper presents two use cases illustrating how Digital Twin technologies and the CyclOps platform can be applied to offset printing operations, digitalizing factory processes and enabling AI-driven models, towards achieving Zero-Defect Manufacturing (ZDM), fostering improved efficiency and innovation in the manufacturing process.