From Great Machines to Intelligent Production · Steve Lynn · Executive Director · DURST N. America

Steve Lynn used to compete against Durst.

From the outside, he saw a premium brand, strong technology, highly reliable equipment, and a company that wasn’t particularly easy to compete with. So when the opportunity came to join Durst North America seven or eight years ago, he didn’t need much convincing.

Today, as Executive Director of Durst North America, Steve has watched the company expand its position across labels, large format, corrugated, folding carton, software, and increasingly automation and AI.

At LOOP in Chicago, Morten B. Reitoft talks with Steve about what drives that development.

One characteristic is ambition.

When Durst decides to enter a segment, the objective isn’t simply to participate. In labels, for example, Durst made a strategic decision years ago to become a significant player, followed by continued investments in technology, products, people, and customer relationships.

And those customer relationships are important.

Steve describes how Durst tries to make every customer a reference customer — because whether a company officially introduces a prospect to that customer or not, people in the industry talk. The experience with the technology, service, people, and support ultimately becomes part of Durst’s reputation.

That feedback also travels back into development.

Durst brings R&D and management close to customers in the individual regions, allowing the company to understand requirements that may differ between North America and Europe and use those conversations to influence future technology.

But perhaps the biggest change is that Durst is increasingly thinking beyond individual printing systems.

Kyveris represents an ambitious vision where machines, software, data, automation, and AI become part of one intelligent production environment. Rather than optimizing isolated pieces of equipment, the objective is to connect the factory and ultimately move toward increasingly autonomous production.

For Steve, that responds directly to challenges printers already face: labor availability, automation, productivity, and the many isolated systems currently solving individual parts of the production process.

And it is a bold promise.

Kyveris isn’t simply another machine with a specification and a price tag. It is a longer-term strategy for how production could operate — and one that will require not only technology development, but also close cooperation between Durst, its regional teams, and its customers.

In this INKISH film, Morten talks with Steve Lynn about Durst’s culture, customer relationships, competition, labels, software, future packaging opportunities, and why Kyveris may represent one of the company’s most ambitious commitments yet.

Because the next step isn’t necessarily building a faster press.

It may be making the entire factory smarter.