Tilia Labs recently announced a partnership that will build the unique software capabilities of Tilia Phoenix into every Highcon system going forward and offer them to existing customers. As part of this partnership, Tilia Labs will develop functionality to automatically place optimized nicks and stripping lines within the base version of Tilia Phoenix, their flagship planning and imposition application that employs Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology enabling optimal imposition and dynamic jobs ganging. These capabilities will reduce the number of make readies and operators’ time on every job and allow Highcon customers to produce more jobs per shift with maximum efficiency and reduced waste.

The inclusion of Tilia Labs’ AI-driven imposition software that enables dynamic ganging is integral to Highcon’s Digital Manufacturing vision that seeks to break the long-standing link between the number of customer jobs and the number of projected jobs. By allowing tilia Phoenix to account for all jobs in the queue and key parameters such as due dates, order quantities, and finishing, tilia Phoenix generates optimized combinations that reduce the number of production runs, makereadies, and changeovers. When combined with Highcon’s Digital Die-cutting systems, this approach moves from the realm of theory to the real world and allows plants to process many more jobs per shift, increasing total throughput and revenue. This approach is applicable both with digitally printed and conventionally printed cartons.

“Highcon’s Digital Manufacturing Vision dovetails perfectly with the benefits tilia Phoenix’s Artificial Intelligence brings to our industry. Alongside Highcon’s focus on material optimization and short-run production, tilia Phoenix is the perfect solution to continuously feed the machines quickly and efficiently. We are excited about this partnership and look forward to transforming corrugated and folding carton manufacturing,” said George Folickman, Global Sales Director, for Tilia Labs.

Tilia Labs and Highcon already have several mutual clients providing the hypothesis that combining a larger pool of orders in production planning leads to reduced manufacturing costs and gains in overall throughput.

“We came to understand that Tilia Labs’ Artificial Intelligence is a key enabler to our Digital Manufacturing vision, changing the paradigm of production planning and increasing the value of Highcon’s solutions to packaging converters. The optimal imposition and the dynamic ganging abilities will enable substrate optimization and will greatly support the growing sustainability requirements which is part of the core value proposition of Highcon. We are delighted to have established this partnership and to know that our customers will be receiving the enabler to Digital Manufacturing with every system we deliver” said Simon Lewis, Highcon’s VP of Marketing.

We asked Simon a little more about what this means for the business and the development.

Simon, why was the deal done?

Highcon and Tilia Labs have been working together for more than a year in a relatively “low key” way. During that time we got to know one another better. We’ve seen how tilia Phoenix has helped existing customers. And understood the true uniqueness of their AI-driven imposition. Highcon’s mission is to drive the Digital Manufacturing revolution in paperboard packaging and display, helping our customers become more productive at a lower cost; we became convinced that bundling Tilia with every unit would simplify the customer decision process, and streamline adoption and increase usage of Highcon’s systems. And, of course, it helped that Tilia Labs agreed to develop the automatic nicks and strip lines functionality.

Interestingly, finishing is a bottleneck to full leverage of Tilia Labs’ capabilities in many converters. Highcon’s digital finishing systems remove that bottleneck. Thus the combination of Tilia and Highcon is a force-multiplier for both companies.

What will be the advantages to the customer of using machines equipped with Phoenix? In what way will it increase efficiency by saving costs and energy?

Automation of nicks and strip lines, saving operator time. The option of dynamic ganging using AI-driven imposition to deliver more jobs and packages with fewer sheets, setups and waste, means lower costs, lower carbon footprint, lower energy consumption and faster job turnaround times.

How does the AI component of Phoenix work and make it different from other digital workflows, let alone analogue workflows?

When you have dozens of jobs, it’s not possible for a planner, however gifted, to sort through all the job parameters and create a range of layouts with different characteristics in order to optimize production. The number of permutations and the complexity is simply too great. And even if you’ve managed to build an effective, smart production plan, a rush order comes in and the whole plan “falls to pieces”. With AI-driven workflow, there is no limit to the ability to handle complexity, there’s no problem if something changes like the arrival of a rush order. In this regard, tilia Phoenix is truly unique and powerful.

In what way does Highcon and Tilia's collaboration bring what Cimpress has called the 'mass-production of one' closer to realisation?

Highcon is about batch production. Since Highcon’s systems combine digitally-driven mechanical creasing and laser die cutting, we facilitate productive manufacturing of small- and medium-run jobs, with full mechanical creases. To the extent that a collection of jobs of one share the same physical characteristics and different artwork, then the collaboration could facilitate the production of such jobs. But right now it doesn’t look like the central use case.