Ricoh recently held its third Print Evolution Live event, showcasing some of the company’s latest hardware and software and talking about the future of print with more than 100 customers and suppliers.
The third edition of Ricoh Print Evolution Live took place in Telford in late November, bringing together 120 people from 75 companies from across the sector to not just take in some of Ricoh’s latest technology, but also discuss how the sector is evolving.
“It is great to get people together,” says Simon Isaacs, national sales director at Ricoh Graphic Communications. “Especially as we get people from around the industry including some key partners. It’s one of the great things about the print industry – that cross-industry collaboration with suppliers and the supply chain that we have.
“With Print Evolution Live we realised that we don’t just want people to look at our lovely new printers, we want it to be a catalyst for evolution and change – the clue is in the title,” he laughs. “Our customers and partners want to go beyond the hardware and look at integrated solutions. That’s one of the things that we got back from customers after last year and changed the events this time to reflect this.”
Digitalisation journey
One of the big talking points at this year’s event was digitalisation. “The marketplace is on a digitisation journey and Ricoh has been on that journey as well,” says Simon. “There are parallels with our manufacturing processes and back office automation that resonate with our commercial print and graphic arts customers and our channel partners, as they see their world being lived and invested in by Ricoh.
“It’s more than just being about big printers. It’s the whole factory, how things are made, how suppliers are managed, how procurement and HR processes are managed and how information is shared and how print and document management can be a valuable way to do that. It’s all part of a bigger picture. Print Evolution Live is about more than just print, although we did have 20 tonnes of printers there as well.”
Attendees to Print Evolution Live could tailor their event experience by choosing the sessions they attended. Sessions covered a variety of topics, including automation, marketing, variable data, online orchestration and several focusing on different printers.
Workflow automation
The printer that garnered the most attention was the Pro Z75 B2-plus, which enables greater workflow automation and shorter print runs. One of the demonstrations involved printing on 500g board and creating gift boxes from them for attendees to take home. “You can’t get people to a print show and not print something for them to take away,” laughs Simon. “With the Z75 we printed on board and created the boxes, which we filled with things like personalised wrapped chocolate bars and other printed items.
“Attendees were interested in the potential for short run and/or personalised packaging. There is a move from high volume, long run static jobs to more personalised short runs. The packaging aspect was really of interest to them; how do they produce shorter runs and personalise it on the fly and what do they need to do to be able to get a workflow to do that? Because they’re used to getting a PDF and making plates and doing very long runs.
“We explained the automation that is needed from software, hardware and finishing to do this effectively and move from perhaps two changeovers in a day to, say, 50. There was a lot of interest from printers looking at this to see how they increase that workflow through their factory and take a much higher number of orders to create the same volume and still make money.”
Simon adds that the software can batch orders into meaningful runs. “You don’t want to be doing too many changeovers on any jet technology so you need the intelligence in the software to group and batch orders into long enough print runs so you’ve got a meaningful day scheduled out. If you’ve got a buffer of a day or longer, you can create the long runs. The software will create those, which might be batching 10, 20, 30 jobs from different customers based on not just the board that’s loaded on the printer, but also the way you’ve got the finishing set up as well. Your production system can make some decisions before an operator even touches it.”
This technology shows the opportunities available in commercial print. “Our partners see commercial print as a big opportunity in either the print rooms or commercial print itself, such as those that serve a corporate or a government application,” says Simon.
Following the success of Print Evolution Live, Simon says the event will return in 2026. As with previous events, Ricoh will analyse the feedback from attendees to this event, which will then inform the agenda for the next to ensure it is as relevant as possible.
