Ricoh artificial intelligence tool helps drive accuracy and efficiency for production print businesses

The Ricoh Pro Scanner Option collects information directly from users’ technology to discover patterns that power smarter printers

Ricoh Europe, London, 19 January 2021 – Ricoh Europe today unveiled the Ricoh Pro Scanner Option to enable production printers to continually improve by levering advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to close feedback loops. 

Now that vision systems have evolved to the point that they can approach human performance in identifying details to differentiate individual faces and objects, these technologies have outstanding value for production print. They can help improve accuracy, decrease manual touchpoints and increase efficiencies – on a continuing basis

The Ricoh Pro Scanner Option, available for Ricoh Pro™ VC60000 and Ricoh Pro™ VC70000 high speed inkjet platforms. It uses integrated 600 dpi CIS scanners and a control unit for near real time visibility. This view, directly into the production process, allows for live capture and display of printed images as they move through the press. This includes the option to replay captured pages and zoom in on them for close examination.

The Pro Scanner Option’s SmartStart capabilities can also help automate a variety of labour and time-consuming tasks, such as printhead cleaning. Operators can schedule printer preparation tasks – recurring or one-off, attended or unattended – to run when they fit into their workflow, with the option to receive progress notifications every step of the way including prior to starting a shift. From there, the solution carefully measures the results of the task, noting how those results and its methods differed from last time, gradually, intelligently and automatically improving over time. Today, when onsite staff may be unavailable, such a tool is incredibly helpful for productivity and business continuity.

“Today’s advances in vision systems play a huge role in digital transformation and workflow optimisation, and Ricoh’s innovative technologies continue to be at the heart of that,” said Clive Stringer, Director, Continuous Feed and High End Software Sales, Ricoh Europe. “So much of what we do at Ricoh comes from our experiences and our clients, and we then incorporate that knowledge into our R&D programme. Our Pro Scanner Option accelerates and automates that process directly inside of users’ printers, so clients can deliver the sustained improvement they need for steady business growth. And with the addition of AI and ML, the feedback loop is continuous.”

The Pro Scanner Option can analyse print samples, enabling print devices to self-assess and make decisions without operator intervention, uncovering new efficiencies and improvements. The offering simplifies complexity for operators with automated prepress checks, including jet-out detection, verification of ink density, and front-to-back and page-to-page registration review. Optional intelligent pattern recognition can be used to automatically check the result on the page against the file submitted, identifying and highlighting issues for simple, immediate correction – or even correcting them on its own, automatically. The Pro Scanner Option helps take tasks off operators’ plates while still driving the business forward, freeing up workers to focus on value adding tasks.