Murder of a 1018d

Boy, I sure hope not! What is the meter read on the unit? I have always taken the monthly volume x's five and then cut it by half. This would then give a life cycle to work with.

What is the current meter read?

Art

Art, I don't quite follow what you mean. By the way, the meter is at 85,310, this was done in a 10 month period.

I'm sorry take the max monthly volume and x's by 36 month and then divide by two. 15,000 x 36 = 540,000 divide by 2 = 270,000 should be the life cycle of the piece of equipment.

I would love to make the sale, however this system has only 85K on it, this system should last another 150,000 page, it's only had one PM!

Art

I think it should last too, but Ricoh tech support is saying those copies were put on in too short of a period of time and has more or less ruined it. I have a hard time buying this, and have been told by my dealership to convey this message to the end user. As a salesperson with ethics, I can't do that unless I believe it myself.

On a similar note, back to old analog. We sold a number of those 3813's. They have been giving us so much trouble. Ricoh says there is nothing wrong with them. I know they are small machines, but I can't afford to lose customers over it in our small territory and that is what is happening. Does anyone else have problems with these? It seems that once we get around the first PM, we can not get the copy quality back. White bands going down the page. We clean and/or replace the corona, transfer grid, develover, etc.... two days later and the problem is back.

We've been down this road before with Service. Service and Sales seem to always be at odds with each other regarding MCV or MMV. Ricoh's Service manger for Texas was down here once and we were arguing a similar story on a 1045. Sales books say MCV/MMV is 100K. Service says that it should only be a MCV/MVV of 50K. Our customer was doing about 68K/month. I first pulled out the Buyers Lab book and showed him the MCV/MVV listed on the spec sheet. He said that was an arbitrary number that Ricoh and Service did not publish. I then went and pulled the Sales Launch material for the 1035/1045, a publication by Ricoh and it clearly states MCV/MVV is 100K for the 1045. In short, I am attaching page 20 from the Launch material for the 1018. It clearly states and I highlighted it 15K/month. Ricoh says it, Service has to abide by it regardless of whether the Ricoh Service Gurus think it should be so. We, the salesmen, rely on this type of information to sell Ricoh's machines. We don't write the copy, we sell by it and Ricoh service has to abide by it...Unless the average volume is over the 15K, which in this case it's not!

Thanks for the info. Our owner told me that because they are running too high of a volume on the machine and because Ricoh tech says so too, I have to tell them that we can not fix the machine to a reliable condition, they should replace it, and we will cancel their maintenance agreement on this one if they don't. ???? I'm all for solution selling, but on a machine that is only one year old that our company recommended in the first place!?

If the cost per copy is anywhere near what it is supposed to be, like .018 or .019 or there abouts, this should help justify an upgrade. That means that an appropriate placement of a Ricoh 1035 at .012 per copy would save the client about $65 per month and a 1035 backed by a good service team will last at least 4 years. At a reasonably agressive $160 per month, it costs $95. And, there's got to be something in the way of prints or faxes that you can migrate to the system to help. At 8500 per month, they've got to have other volume somewhere. You might be able to build a case that shows them increased productivity and only costs an extra $60 or $70 a month. Also, look into the history. If the system is connected, they may not have known what the volume was going to be. What was the prior system/volume? Do some research to help build a case.
P.S. We have 3213s running 6000 copies per month, the 1018 should be able to support that volume. Although I would never personally place one in that environment without some reality check conversation with the decision maker. It should be able to last through Art's projection. Heck, there's not a whole lot in the little guy to replace. Something isn't fitting here.

Yesterday, Ted said that Ricoh should stand behind the 15K per month MRMV. Let me play devil's advocate (as I'm accused of doing often). Let's say Ricoh decides to take the moral high road and publish a MRMV that is reasonable say 6-7K.

Do you really want to be shut out of bid deals with specs requiring an MRMV of 10K and above even though the account is only doing 2K?

Do you want to start hearing that the reason they bought from someone else is because the other unit was "more durable"?

We may be able to effectively defend Ricoh's quality to the one we are meeting with, but what about the other 3.2 people involved in the decision that we never meet?

I personally would rather have exagerated MRMV's and except the responsibility of protecting my customers from under buying.

All that having been said, to say that a 1018 doing 8,500 a month is shot after 10 months is absolutely ludecrous.

my rule of thumb is 60% of Manufacturer's Recommended MAXIMUM Monthly Volume as an uncommon maximum and that would be 9,000. I stress that this number should be uncommon and the average shouldn't exceed about 30% which would be 5,000.

I'm sorry for the misunderstnading Jim, I said that Ricoh must stand behind THEIR MRMV. They make up the MRMV's, so they should have the guts to back them up. If Ricoh wants to change the MRMV's for machines and make them "more reasonable" then they need to do it and we will figure out how to sell them. Until then, they need to stand behind a product that has not exceeded THEIR MRMV!! 8,500 copies per month average is not "too high" of a volume for this machine. I'm sorry Darren, but your owner is an idiot on this one. If it is under RMAP maintenance, Ricoh has not choice. I bet though, it's not.

If this system is under m.a. it should be replaced with a "like" unit. If I had no movement from management on this, I would cut the customer a deal and sell him a new copier at cost and keep the old for myself. If management does noy agree to you keeping the system for yourself, I would question what is really going on.

I would have sold a 1018 if the customer had a volume of 7k per month. I also would expect that the system, would last one PM.


On another note, call me I may have a solution for your.

Art

I have often shared with a client the following point of view. And maybe we should get clarification. When it came to MAXIMUM RECOMMENDED MONTHLY VOLUME, I suggested this is not what you should base your engine decision on, rather consider that if you run at 30% to 50% of this figure on a regular basis, the system is designed to handle a necessary spike at this "MAXIMUM" number. Does anyone know if manufacturers actually publish these numbers based on every month, or just as a maximum in a random given month as I have evolved the interpretation.

I agree, you should sell considering 30% to 50% as the acceptable range. 8,500 for a 1018D is about 50% of the MRMV. There should be no problem here. Now Ricoh will also tell you that the MRMV is to be run evenly over a months time. not 15,000 in one or two days, but about 750/day (based on 20 working days per month. Some companies run 24/7, others work on weekends also, but we are looking for an average. The only times we have had serious probelms was when one customer tried to run about 50K in about 4 days on a 551. They went through parts and toner like crazy. and nearly ran the machine into the ground. they were trying to get ready for abig function on the weekend, and really screwed things up running that much in 4 days. We almost had to camp a tech out there after day two. We told them not to do that again, and if they needed to do something like that, we would rent them some more machines for a couple days to handle the load. Sorry for the rambling.

I also have run into issues between sales and sevice, on the MRMV issue. As it's one of my responsibilities to define clear marketing objectives for my salesmen and our contracts administration, I had to do some in depth investigation. What I have come up with is this. There are three main types of monthly volume: Average, Maximum & Duty Cycle. Minimum is also used on the HVC's. Duty Cycle was a hard one for me to get details on. Apparently it originates from printer engine specs, and represents how many sheets of paper can be run through the engine/month before it's "major" component fails. This major component is normally the longest yield part (PCU or DVU) and is hard to define. This is apparently the number Ricoh reports to BLI, etc. The other two types are always found in the Service Management Guides, under performance and reliability objectives, that our service departments use. Duty cycle information is also occasionally included. Here is a list that I put together for my organization:
Monthly Volumes
Gest. Ricoh Ave Max Duty Cycle
1302/F 1013/F 2000 5000 5000
1502 1015 3500 10000 30000
1802/D 1018/D 4000 10000 30000
2212 1022 5000 20000 35000
2712 1027 5000 20000 45000
3502 1035 10000 50000 80000
4502 1045 20000 50000 100000
5502 1055 40000 175000 175000
6002 1060 30000 250000 300000
7502 1075 50000 300000 300000
8502 1085 80000 400000 400000
10502 1105 80000 400000 500000
Last note, I have found that this information is not always consistent with what is found in Product Information Guides, distributed by marketing, but it is the only thing my service department will adhere to. Cheers, Jim.

As a follow up to round it off, Ricoh's standard 60 month lifecycle is determined by the Max Monthly volume published in the Service Management Guides.