Koenig & Bauer develops new fields of business with digital products
Image: Koenig & Bauer
Koenig & Bauer has announced a new group-wide unit focussed on digital transformation.
Koenig & Bauer’s group strategy, Exceeding Print, adopts global megatrends as a basis to further advance the company’s digital transformation and to continue its development of digital business models. New digital products associated with the company’s core product – printing presses for practically all substrates and technologies – are being added to the portfolio, and ensure that customers can continue to rely on maximum productivity and availability in the future.
“The digital transformation is ‘people business’. The realignments in corporate and innovation culture, combined with the development of modern software products for our customers, are driving the company’s transition from a machine manufacturer to a technology provider,” said Ralf Sammeck, member of the executive board and CDO at Koenig & Bauer. “We are becoming ‘digital trusted advisors’ to our customers and can use data to derive recommendations for action, for example to make production more efficient.”
The new digital unit has been operating at group level since 2022, coordinating and supporting the development, implementation and market launch of digital products and services – from the initial idea through to commercial viability.
“We direct our focus at our customers and provide them with support wherever they can make their businesses even more profitable with digital solutions,” says Sandra Wagner, vice president, digitalisation, and head of the interdisciplinary team. As the former head of sales and marketing at group subsidiary Koenig & Bauer Coding, she helped to give a face to artificial intelligence: The digital assistant Kyana offers every option for smart production support, from remote service to predictive maintenance. Wagner and her team are planning to further expand this service and intend to integrate Koenig & Bauer’s already existing capabilities for recording, analysing and interpreting machine data using artificial intelligence into a central, AI-assisted platform for customers.
Additionally, the market launch of a digital product that unites two key components of the group strategy Exceeding Print, namely sustainability and digitalisation, is imminent, according to the company.