Taking place from 2-4 October 2024, the live open house event will focus on automation, with demonstrations of Horizon’s finishing technology working with printers and robots.

Started five years ago, Horizon’s Smart Factory events focus on a different theme each year, with 2024’s ‘lights-out’ theme chosen to show off the Horizon kit’s ability to produce books, booklets and other stitched products, hands-free.

Jason Seaber, technical sales director for Horizon’s exclusive UK and Ireland distributor, IFS, said the event would “push the boundaries of automation” to achieve completely autonomous printing, finishing, packaging, and logistics processes with brand-new tech like self-guided vehicles, robots, and AI.

“Seamless integration of printers, finishing equipment, and workflow systems will allow for the monitoring of each job’s production status and progress,” Seaber said.

“This new level of automation gives operators the opportunity to shift from repetitive, labour-intensive tasks to more fulfilling work while achieving a good work-life balance.”

Horizon said it had put particular attention on cutting out manual labour after products had been trimmed, when they need to be moved to dispatch or storage areas.

Currently an area of production heavily dependent on manual labour – especially for highly variable short runs – the Smart Factory will sort jobs in the sequence they are produced with barcodes, before moving them to the right destination and attaching a dispatch label.

Firms interested in attending the Japanese event should contact IFS.