Hybrid Software, developer of innovative software and electronics for packaging and label printing, is pleased to announce the successful conclusion of Labelexpo Europe, held last week in Barcelona. Hybrid introduced three AI-based products with real potential to transform how packaging and labels are printed. In addition, they announced the acquisition of Conics, a software development and consultancy firm for the printing and packaging industry based in Ypres, Belgium.
The first of these products was Matches, an AI-driven application to search all jobs produced by a printer or trade shop to find jobs with similar attributes or elements, including text, barcodes, and even image content. Many packages are similar but differ in key areas such as sizes, flavors, or languages so identifying similar jobs produced in the past helps assure fast and error-free production of new jobs. Matches is based on AI-technology developed by Hybrid Software’s customer and partner Saueressig and is available to users of Hybrid’s CLOUDFLOW software on a subscription basis.
Second, the SmartDFE™ front end for digital presses is built around a patented algorithm that uses proprietary AI modeling to predict the speed at which a label or package will print on a given digital press, and then optimizes the content of that job to maximize the productivity of the press. SmartDFE was pervasive at Labelexpo, powering high-speed presses from Mark Andy, Dantex, Weigang, Flora, and many other manufacturers. SmartDFE, as well as other high performance software including Harlequin and Mako, is developed by Global Graphics, the OEM business unit of Hybrid Software.
Finally, the acquisition of Conics brought a higher level of AI expertise to Hybrid Software, specifically through their jAImes product. jAImes uses a trained AI agent to extract order data from natural language emails and prompts customers to supply missing information to complete their orders accurately and on time. It also interfaces with packaging MIS systems such as CERM to create production orders automatically for an even higher degree of automation, especially for reorders which make up a large percentage of production for many packaging printers and converters.
Hybrid Software Chairman Guido Van der Schueren explains: “Artificial intelligence is a very important topic to our industry and our customers, but much of what has been introduced is based on marketing hype with little or no tangible benefits to the packaging industry. Our Labelexpo showing puts Hybrid Software in the forefront of AI offerings with a real return on investment for our customers. Furthermore, our AI products are all based on private large language models (LLMs) which protect the security of our customers’ data. We never train public LLMs or commingle customer data; our customers simply would not accept that. With our strong investment in R&D we will continue to enhance and expand our AI offerings in the future to have an even more significant impact on the labels and packaging industry.”