Background
Ricoh multifunction printers (MFPs) are widely used in many countries and regions around the globe. To provide customers with a productive printing environment, Ricoh must deliver its toner cartridges quickly and in perfect condition.
Ricoh has been producing MFPs for a long time. Back when the number of products was small and monochrome printing was mainstream, Ricoh used large machines to quickly fill toner bottles in large volumes with the same kind of toner powder.
As color printing became popular and customer needs diversified, the variety of toners and cartridges increased significantly. Accordingly, Ricoh had to develop a toner filling machine for high-mix low-volume production to deal with varying customer demands. Our current toner filling machine is swift and space-saving; compared with conventional machines, the time taken to switch to a different product is 40 times faster and the space required for the machine is 1/40th of the space needed before. Because of its compact size, this machine has been introduced not only into toner production plants but also to logistics bases and sales companies. Ricoh now manufactures and ships its toner from locations much closer to customers than ever before, thereby reducing the environmental impact associated with the transportation of toner cartridges and shortening lead times.
To further enhance quality across the world, as well as to solve the issues of labor shortages and cost reduction, Ricoh is continually striving to further automate its toner cartridge production lines.