Heidelberg Extends Industry 4.0 Offering With Acquisition of DOCUFY

Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG (Heidelberg) has reached another milestone in its digital growth strategy with its takeover of DOCUFY GmbH in Bamberg, Germany, (www.docufy.de) effective May 1, 2017. DOCUFY develops professional software solutions for technical documentation and is the first provider of multi-level documentation. DOCUFY’s solutions optimize the processes involved in the creation of technical documentation and make them available digitally to all departments along the entire value chain. The company has recorded strong and profitable growth in recent years and generated turnover of around €6.5 million last year. DOCUFY has around 80 employees.

The acquisition will complement the portfolio of the Heidelberg Digital Platforms division. Digital Platforms offers IT solutions for digitizing and automating processes involved in designing, producing and servicing innovative high-tech products. This division is where Heidelberg concentrates its technologies and expertise around product life cycle management, which it has spent decades acquiring, in order to be able to offer them to industrial customers also. Heidelberg Digital Platforms addresses a worldwide market with a volume of around €1 billion.

Heidelberg Digital Platforms provides industrial customers with end-to-end process support in product life cycle management.

The solutions for digital transformation result in a considerable improvement in efficiency and a significantly shorter time to market for new products, so very much in keeping with Industry 4.0.

DOCUFY counts well-known industrial companies among its customers and will continue to support them as usual as well as additionally offering them Heidelberg solutions in the future for further digitization of their value chain. The takeover will extend Heidelberg’s existing base of industrial customers, and as such offers additional turnover and revenue potential for the company. The founder and Managing Director of DOCUFY, Uwe Reißenweber, will be staying on in his current role.

“With the takeover of DOCUFY, we are gradually implementing our strategy ‘Heidelberg goes digital!’" Rainer Hundsdörfer, CEO of Heidelberg, said. "But the investment in the growth market of digital product life cycle management will also strengthen our own competitiveness."

The Heidelberg Digital Platforms division is part of the Heidelberg Digital Business and Services segment under the leadership of Dr. Ulrich Hermann, member of the management board responsible for digital business and services. In this segment, Heidelberg implements intelligent linking of equipment, services and consumables to develop new business models in the digital environment aimed at allowing customers to access new revenue potential against the backdrop of continuing digitization.

“With DOCUFY, Heidelberg is gaining access to other Industry 4.0 technologies and expertise such as web services, smart devices, internet technologies, augmented reality and cloud computing," Hermann said. "The gradual integration of the DOCUFY solutions into the overall portfolio of Heidelberg Digital Platforms will enable us to offer our industrial customers end-to-end process support in product life cycle management in the future. In this way, Heidelberg is underlining its leading position in the area of digitization."

Source: Heidelberg.