**Ricoh Print on Demand Services** Print Solutions
Case Study | Invertek Drives
Invertek Drives, based in Wales, UK, manufactures sophisticated variable frequency drive technology to control electric motors in a wide range of industrial and commercial applications.
The company builds its drives at a dedicated global assembly facility using the latest technology. The company employs around 220 people, generates revenue of over £50 million, and manufactures more than 260,000 drives a year, of which 90% are sold internationally.
Invertek Drives continuously innovates and updates its technologies, always seeking to improve product design and performance. Managing the overnight printing process for essential user and technical guides became a taxing, complex task, absorbing significant time. How could Invertek produce the guides in a way that better matched its very flexible build-to-order manufacturing process while eliminating manual errors?
From conveyor systems to water pumping stations and almost every conceivable manufacturing process, modern industrial automation relies on electric motors to keep production lines running.
Invertek Drives serves this essential market sector, and manufactures highly sophisticated variable frequency drives that provide flexible power, up to 250 kW, sold worldwide.
Each Invertek drive is built to order, which requires meticulous planning, from the arrival of goods inwards to the final picklist and
packaging. Naturally, every drive despatched to a customer must include the appropriate user guide, updated to match the latest specification. To meet urgent customer demands, every day the team would plan out the next day’s production, which included user and technical manuals.
Nigel Evans, Marketing Manager, explains, “Naturally, electrical and electronic components must be accompanied by the correct safety and technical data. Not only must we comply with international regulations, but also ensuring that manuals are fully up-to-date is part of customer service. The guides help customers operate their drives as effectively as possible, and reduce the number of calls to our service teams – which in turn ensures greater customer satisfaction.”
In the past, Invertek relied on a company to print user guides overnight in small batches to match the next day’s manufacturing plan. The team meticulously checked that the correct manuals had been delivered, and these were then stored on site ready to be dropped into delivery pallets.
Mark Walling, Manufacturing Engineer, comments, “Updating user guides, reviewing proofs, tracking editions, and managing the daily deliveries all absorbed significant time. We devoted considerable effort to the process, such as cross-checking language versions and much more, with a constant flow of emails and spreadsheets within the team and to the print company.”
He continues, “By the time we had completed proof reviews, it could be more than a week before we saw revised copies. With our build-to-order processes, this represented a significant lead time and potential delay, and the overnight print costs were substantial.”
Working with a print consultant, Invertek realised that on demand technologies could offer a betterfit with its custom-build manufacturing processes.
Using print on demand, guides could be printed for each customer order, eliminating the complex and time-consuming tracking of versions, overnight print deliveries, and stock. It would also reduce paper waste.
To turn the concept into reality, Invertek turned to Ricoh and within six weeks implemented a print on demand solution with PlockMatic inline booklet finishing. The system handles the complete print production process, from plain sheets through to final bound copies, at the touch of a button. The solution sits on the factory floor alongside the drive production lines, and prints the completed booklets, ready to drop into the delivery box.
Initially, Invertek used the Ricoh solution as an in-house replacement for the external service; for each drive, the production team selected and printed the appropriate guide to be included in the despatch pallet. Both guide and drive carry barcodes, which enable operators to ensure a match.
Two months after the deployment, Invertek created a fully automated, integrated process using the Ricoh workflow solution. As each customer’s drive starts its manufacturing journey, the company’s production planning system sends an xml message to the Ricoh workflow solution to print the correct user guide, using the latest updated document.
He continues, “In common with many businesses, we are committed to sustainable manufacturing. For example, Invertek is accredited to ISO 14001:2015, a standard designed to address the balance between maintaining profitability and reducing environmental impact. The Ricoh solution enables Invertek to print manuals and user guides matched one to one to our manufacturing processes, ensuring reduced waste and greater total production efficiency.”
Nigel Evans concludes, “The Ricoh print on demand capabilities, integrated with manufacturing systems, deliver lower print costs, reduced waste, and time released from administration. Most importantly, the Ricoh solution gives us very flexible, full control of our processes, helping Invertek on its mission to offer customers high efficiency drives that are manufactured to the highest technical and sustainability standards.”
Ricoh Solution/Products
Ricoh Pro 8310S with PlockMatic in-line finisher
Ricoh TotalFlow workflow
Objectif Lune Planet Press
User makes a request for a manual, by scanning a barcode and the request is picked up by PlanetPress. The application does a lookup for the relevant information via an XML file, then imports the PDF file from storage and sends it into a hot folder on TotalFlow Prep, where it is imposed as a booklet. Print ready PDF is then sent to Production Manager for printing.
Using the in-house production printing equipment and TotalFlow print on demand solution has transformed and streamlined the production of user guides.
"At the most basic level we no longer spend time on checking user guides as they arrive each day, and we have released valuable storage space. Most importantly, we have saved literally hours of spreadsheet manipulation, and eliminated supplier and team email exchanges. Automation eliminates possible human error, and we can now be certain that we have the correct guide with each drive,” says Mark Walling.
“We estimate that the Ricoh solution has saved around 80% of the time we spent managing production of the user guides. At a commercial level, we have cut our costs by £80,000 annually, too. For example, a guide that previously cost £3 to produce now costs less than £1, a 66% saving. Some of the smaller guides were proportionally even more costly per page: with print on demand enabled by Ricoh, the savings are even greater, in some cases moving from 40p per booklet to 5p, a cost saving of more than 80%."
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