During the second day of the pre-drupa event, Ricoh announced its revolutionary workflow solutions for Graphic Arts, set to debut at drupa 2024 in Hall 8a, Messe Düsseldorf, Germany, from May 28 to June 7. The highlight of their showcase is the RICOH ProcessDirector™, offering touchless end-to-end job submission and completion for commercial print operations.
Ricoh’s software addresses challenges in today’s print production environment, such as multiple input streams, disconnected workflows, and lack of job visibility. Market research from Keypoint Intelligence reveals that job onboarding is the least automated workflow process, with only 13% of web-to-print jobs in Western Europe routing into the same production workflow as other submission methods.
Developed in collaboration with clients and analysts, Ricoh’s new Graphic Arts workflow software leverages proven technology solutions, including the scalable and vendor-neutral RICOH ProcessDirector. These tools streamline processes and minimize touchpoints—from input to finishing—by automatically preflighting, imposing, and batching jobs. This automation facilitates the transition from traditional analog to digital printing.
RICOH TotalFlow Producer™ enables print providers to automate job onboarding with a centralized, web-based portal for operation-wide visibility and control. This software reduces the need for skilled labor during job submission and processing, minimizes bottlenecks and waste, and improves profitability. Combined with RICOH Predictive Insight™, which harnesses data-driven insights and performance optimization, Ricoh’s solutions for Graphic Arts empower print providers to maximize productivity, reduce errors, and support mixed market applications.
Eef de Ridder, Vice President, Graphic Communications Group, Ricoh Europe, stated, “The latest addition to our Ricoh-developed vendor-agnostic solutions supports our approach to co-innovation by collaboratively solving production print, workflow, and visibility issues. It ensures smoother operation across different technologies and company locations to optimize productivity and expand new business opportunities.” Ricoh’s new workflow technology for Graphic Arts is slated for release in late 2024.