Dominiek Arnout is responsible for strategic business development at Ricoh. He has had a long career in print technology, with considerable experience of inkjet with graphics at Agfa, and more recently at Ricoh. In part 1, we talk about what needs to be done to accelerate the adoption of inkjet in new markets.

Dominiek, tell us a little more about your background how did you get involved in the print sector? 

I studied chemical engineering and business administration and I have to admit to joining the print sector by accident.

During this time, I gained a rounded experience in most aspects of operations and through this learned how challenging it is to introduce new technology into a traditional marketplace. Understandably people find disruption difficult even though the new technology can provide performance attributes that traditional technology cannot. The challenge for inkjet initially was reliability. But now I think we have succeeded in proving that it can work reliably in a number of different markets.

So, what about Ricoh, what is the vision here?

The vision of Ricoh is to develop inkjet technology for industrial applications. However, we are realistic as accessing a new industrial market is difficult. We try to deal with this by partnering with key leaders in their respective markets. This is the case for Olbrich for wallpaper (machinery) and Hymmen for wood décor laminate flooring, and Coloreel for embroidered textiles. And this is just a little bit of our recent history.

As I said our challenge is establishing a foothold in a new industrial market. Ricoh has a strong background and significant business as an office equipment and commercial print technology provider so we have the scale and the reach to serve new markets, we want to partner with market leaders who produce machinery for manufacturing sectors so we can together create a solution that best fits the needs of each individual market. 

As well as the obvious technical performances that inkjet can provide, we also have an ambition to impact the value chain and digital on-demand technology radically reduces the need for stock inventory and reduces waste linking with our sustainable commitment as a business.

So, what is your business model, what products and services do you offer?

We have two different views and product offerings. We have different levels from components like heads and inks to more integrated modules to fully integrated stand-alone systems. We approach the different market segments step by step and we have our sign and graphics products. Wide-format is a large market, but it is maturing and has been adversely affected by the COVID crisis. But there are the decor and textile sectors that offer growth but have tougher technical challenges.

Why is industrial print so challenging?

Compared with graphics it is a very different world. The primary demands for the machinery of any type are reliability and uptime. The traditional production process historically focuses on consistency, quality, uptime and variable cost.

All of the components needed to make a high throughput qualitative system was simply not there. You could see it coming but nobody was ready. The technology was not good enough and industrial markets (if you think corrugated board packaging, flexible packaging companies and flooring companies) were all underwhelmed by Inkjet. 

But now, the inflexion point of change is going to come through soon, and I think this has been accelerated somewhat by COVID-19. Data processing power is where it should be - ink quality and all those things are coming together, and we all feel like that it is a real point where things change in 3-5 years. A lot of things are going to change because technology components evolve quickly, and you can achieve an interesting system far quicker than before. 

What factors are important before trying a new sector with new technology?

Before you understand the key factors and minute detail of the business there is no way of entering it successfully in my view. Ricoh has got some significant go-to-market power there are some perceptions based on a limited view from customers of inkjet. It is not an end to end view and this misses the big picture.

What I would like to talk to customers about is how inkjet technology can not only change or reach a level where a cost is comparable to analogue technology - the print speed is getting interesting and in some cases matches analogue - but how it is the best future solution because the full business, the end to end process is changing. But it is easy to miss the big picture if you do not look at the entire economic cycle of analogue, then compare this accurately to digital. Only by doing this will adoption occur. Digital inkjet is for sure impacting the value and supply chain.

In our follow up article, we look a little more at how decentralisation, automation and total e-commerce integration is accelerating due to the COVID-19 crisis.

Contact Dominiek