Towards a Self-Service Approach in the Printing Industry. An Investigation of State of the Art Technologies Along with Industry 4.0 Changes

It is commonly believed that the current economic state of many countries is at the stage of the fourth industrial revolution. The changes resulting from this revolution are affecting all sectors of the economy, including the printing sector. The aim of this article is to analyse the state of the art technology in sheetfed printing and then to identify the challenges for further changes in the technology of this type of printing as well as technological and organisational changes in the processes of preparation and realisation of printing products. The article uses case studies of selected technologies offered by key technology suppliers in this area and case studies of selected business entities – manufacturers of printing products. The research approach adopted in this article also takes conceptual work into account. It was found that the observed changes in the printing industry are consistent with the assumptions of the Industry 4.0 concept in the aspect of the digitisation and mass personalisation of products, which leads to the thesis that in the future personalised digital printing ordered through self-service will play a dominant role.