Page 26 - PWM2025_MAY EBOOK

TECHNOLOGY REPORT

Keeping the wheels turning

B approach, or a customer self-service approach.
ut putting aside the matter of business genera-
As a consequence, Ricoh provides training to custom-
tion, there are a number of causes of break-
down and failure. And as specialists in the
ers on recommended operator cleaning tasks. For
It’s hard to know sector explain, prevention is invariably better Precious, such training “ensures that customers are
which is worse – a than cure. equipped with the right skills to both operate the equip-
Printweek spoke with four manufacturers
print company with to find out what those in the industry should consider ment correctly and perform routine preventative mainte-
nance and cleaning tasks”. Getting this right is
not enough business, when thinking about maximising uptime. fundamental as it should lead to a notable reduction in
or a firm with enough downtime and quality issues; also, when done in house
work but plant that Digital printing this may offer a cost saving.
has broken down. Samantha Precious, strategy and services development
Neither are ideal and manager at Ricoh, says that there is a general acceptance Failures happen
both are worrying. that while certain maintenance work will always be nec- The natural question is to ask what tends to cause
essary, it is likely to have service-level agreements and equipment failures? In answer Precious points out that
time penalties attached to it. they can be caused by any one of a number of causes, such
Words by It’s for this reason that she says that “effective service as environment, general wear and tear, operator error,
Adam Bernstein and intervention is critical, so production processes are media use and the like. “Some outages,” she says, “can be
not compromised”. She remarks that the majority of paper related, which are mainly due to the quality and
Ricoh’s customers “opt for the full maintenance pack- storage of the paper; where moisture in the paper causes
ages, to ensure smooth and efficient maintenance of problems.” She’s of the view that regular preventative
devices”. But that’s not to say that all go down this route. maintenance can “minimise the chances of disruption
Indeed, this is why the company offers different options and downtime... at Ricoh, we offer regular advice and
that include full maintenance, a hybrid (shared) training and provide real-time data to encourage opti-

26 PrintWeek MENA May 2025 www.printweekmena.com