What is the key to success with inkjet? As an industry we must adopt first principle thinking says Richard Darling of Ricoh

This article by Richard Darling appeared in this months issue of the excellent Specialist Printing Worldwide Magazine. Thank you to the team for permitting its republication.

Elon Musk famously shared his thinking around innovation and how he deploys first principles with great success. He focuses on an indivisible problem, a so called first principle. This rigorous process is grounded in Aristotelian thought and given further credibility from the world of physics. In essence, it means isolating the problem first, then designing a solution second. Its brilliance is in its simplicity, yet humans, and in particular humans from the inkjet world don’t always follow this logic.

Technology is fine and science is supposed to push the boundaries of possibility. However, ‘possible’ is too often different to ‘useful’.

Perhaps possibilities are too often assembled into and called solutions, but a solution needs a question to answer or a problem to solve. There are some notable cases of technology being used dogmatically by inkjet fundamentalists where the end result is a pseudo-solution to a non-existent problem, falling into the trap of digital analogic (more later). The result is a clever bit of tech, but a mismatch: it doesn’t do something really useful; it doesn’t do it reliably and it doesn’t deliver economic or operational benefit.

There will always be visionaries and early adopters who are excited by the technology and see possibilities. These people tolerate imperfection whilst being energised by new capability and ways to use it. They see current obstacles and difficulties and imagine what can happen if they can squeeze an industrial inkjet piece of kit into the way they do stuff. These pioneers are valuable: their insight and willingness to leap help to refine ideas and to support R&D involved in bringing new tech to reality.

However, these early, optimistic investments should not be taken for granted and we need to beware creating white elephants which dampen enthusiasm. Word of mouth can broadcast expensive failures very effectively and technology can readily gain a poor reputation as an unsuccessful money-pit, slowing progress for us all.

Moore’s ‘Crossing the chasm’ is an accepted model for how innovations make their way to becoming mainstream or not.

To grow, a new idea must cross from the early adopter phase to appeal to the early majority. In order to do so, the narrative must evolve, and discussions must move on from technical to demonstrate clear, compelling and strategic economic reasons for adoption. At this point the technical problems are solved. Tinkering must stop. We must move from exciting technical discussions with adventurous early adopters to more cold-thinking, hard-headed rationality. This requires inkjet innovators to carefully think of the form in which a technical capability is offered, how it might fit in to existing structures of an operation or market, what barriers exist, what must be changed and how can it be changed. Innovations should have all started with a big WHY.

Where’s the problem or weakness in the way things are already done? What are we trying to solve?

Too often we have seen inkjet make grand entries into markets which looks wonderful but actually is fundamentally flawed. Often, we’ve invented the wrong thing, been too obsessed with speed and replacement of what exists already and fallen into the chasm.

These mistakes result from digital-analogic thinking: creating a near as possible direct replacement for analogue function when this is not needed.

What is ‘digital analogic’? Time is money, centralisation, consolidating volume, going faster is efficient – the only way to go. This is ingrained over years: industry focuses on lowest possible material costs, highest throughput speed and theoretical efficiency, side-lining hidden overheads or cash tied up in WIP and inventory, long supply chains involving risk, lead times, stock and impaired responsiveness.

These are common characteristics of so many manufacturing processes and are obvious targets for digital fluid deposition or print to challenge. Like-for-like inkjet equipment to face-off with an analogue equivalent is not a good idea. It plays to the operational weaknesses and “old think”. It also plays to all the weaknesses of digital technology. Inkjet will not be faster than gravure or flexography.

Higher speed in inkjet gives exponential increase in equipment complexity and cost, and often tips the balance away from economic viability. Printing faster puts print reliability, colour consistency and performance on a knife edge. A formula 1, single-pass printer with an array of the most up to date printhead technology is an impressive technical feat. However, it is digital analogic, it doesn’t solve a problem and often introduces a whole bunch of other problems.

Some digital print equipment is sensibly and deliberately slower, uses a narrower range of qualified substrates and an even tighter range of ink or toner options. Why do end-users need more choice of substrates and inks?

Could it be traditional material cost-consciousness or perhaps outright print snobbery? We should heed the Ockham’s razor principle: “plurality should not be posited without necessity”. Simplified digital print equipment adequately delivers capabilities for smaller operators to do what doesn’t make sense using analogue means.

Industrial inkjet equipment must be realistic and driven by a deeper consideration of benefits it can bring to a whole operation and supply chain. Key has to be versatility to produce fit-for-purpose single items or small lots with minimum fuss, low risk and importantly sited as close to the end of the production process as possible. Small lots will increasingly be the new norm: mainstream. Any part of a production that doesn’t need such a capability should continue to be supplied by traditional analogue means. Of course, if the proportion of volume needing no variety falls below a certain threshold then analogue may itself completely lose its raison d'être.

Ricoh applied this rational process in collaboration with Hymmen to develop the Saturn décor printer. We deliberately focused on solving a market problem to enable wood décor producers themselves to invest in digital to deliver clear economic value. The focus was not speed but throughput, balanced to the production stream targeting a sweet spot where quality, flexibility, speed and total cost all converged. This positioned Saturn printers in a different location compared with other digital offerings on offer. We addressed the right problem to enable producers to decentralise manufacturing, something which has a huge value normally, not only post COVID-19.

We also used a cold calculating methodology to ascertain the economic benefit of one way versus another.

The model and method crosses fixed and variable costs, P&L and balance sheet. Whilst inkjet outsiders may not have full insight into potential end-users’ manufacturing cost accounting minutia, our modelling delivers realistic operating benefit assessment with fit-for-purpose precision.

In summary: inkjet is not equivalent to analogue and it makes no sense to try to make digital analogic equipment formats. Don’t use an F1 single-seater for popping to the shops and don’t expect a hatchback to carry or deliver heavy loads. Horses for courses. Think problem first, solution second. If tech developers all focus on this, inkjet will cross the chasm and be a more widely used technology across a variety of industries.

For comment or questions contact Richard Darling directly.

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