Changes coming

[rthonpm]

There's a lot of experience on this board, and on a slow day my office was talking about changes that may be coming to the industry and equipment.
Already it's gone from being less of a mechanic's field to more of a softer IT field. More and more security features are going in, but what else do people think will start to come along to change what we do or what we see in machines?
I think that within five years or so, faxing will finally go away as a normal form of communication saving us a lot of troubleshooting headaches as to whether it's the machine or the phone line. On a more basic level, will toner last much longer? I was talking to an engineer with one of the manufacturers a hile back who said that gel will be the wave of the future.

Any one have any ideas?

[blackcat4866]

No crystal ball today.....

I don't claim to have a crystal ball. Back in the early 90s there was talk of facsimile becoming obsolete, yet here it is 16 years later. I must admit that attachments to email are far more convenient for me. The only time I ever fax is to test out a customers machine.

=^..^=

[laserman06]

I don't claim to have a crystal ball. Back in the early 90s there was talk of facsimile becoming obsolete, yet here it is 16 years later. I must admit that attachments to email are far more convenient for me. The only time I ever fax is to test out a customers machine.

=^..^=

Better paper trail with email anyway. Big Brother watching everyone

[zico21]

Here's a link about a new technology that caught my eye a number of months ago. Check out the demo videos.

memjet technologies: media#

[10871087]

While fax has certainly died off slowly over the years, I think it will be around for some time to come. I think the biggest changes to come in the next 7-10 years will be color. I think 75% of all machines placed in the 30-60 ppm range will have the ability to put color down on a page at a contracted CPC to the end user of about 3 cents per page.

On the business side of it, low cost GPS will start to creep into all of our lives and RFID will start to become cost effective enough to help maintain inventory at some of the larger dealers.

Some things in the industry will never change. Print shops, lawyers and dentists will continue to be the worst payers in the industry. Shitty lazy ass techs will still be shitty lazy ass techs and I still won't be able to get a reasonable raise.


Just a few thoughts, anyone got anything else.

[b003ace]

Changes

I've worked in several fields, and have seen a pattern in each. This pattern is already well established in the copier industry.

Twenty years ago, most of the profit came from small, letter/A4 size machines, mostly faxes. Their replacement cost was far in excess of their repair and maintenance costs, so people kept them working as long as possible. The high power equipment was only sold to the largest companies, who got the lowest maintenance contract costs.

Ten years ago, fax and printing merged with copying. Digital copiers reduced the cost of larger machines, made maintenance easier, but diagnosis more difficult. Purchase prices fell through the floor, cutting profits from sales. Mass merchants everywhere began offering inexpensive letter/A4 machines that can be replaced for less than the cost of a service call. This cut service profit at the same time sales profit was falling. Color offset some of this effect, allowing dealers to up-sell color that wasn't available in the mass merchant. Cutthroat competition pushed per click rates into loss leader territories.

Today, manufacturers are developing machines with disposable assemblies and advanced self-diagnostics. Need a hot roller in a Sharp, Toshiba, Samsung, Canon, HP? Put in a fusing unit instead. Many printer and fax models are already user installable. One manufacturer is introducing a new color machine which will have "Continuously renewed developer" (not mono-component)! Ricoh's 35/45 cpm machines have drum seals that aren't serviced separately anymore. Need new seals? Install a PCU frame, or the entire PCU. Technicians will be increasingly replaced by parts changers and end users. Customer calls with an operator panel message, say "SC320". Call center will say "We'll send that laser unit right out to you. When it arrives, open the front cover, pull out and dispose of the old one and plug in the new one." Electronic imaging is cutting revenues even lower than the falling per click rate.

Black and white less than 35 cpm will become disposable, even in ledger/A3 size models, if offered at all. New ink-jet technologies such as Ricoh's "Gelsprinter" will replace toner and fusing for many customers as the technology improves. Riso's HC5500 ink-jet printer will come down in price and the print quality will improve dramatically. There will be short term spikes in need for technicians, as demonstrated by the incredibly bad performance of the Ricoh B051/B052 machines, but as the manufacturers work out the bugs, technician pay, already stagnant in many areas, will begin to drop. Senior techs will be driven out, replaced by "service manuals" that read "Problem A - Replace assembly B".

Manufacturers will continue to merge until there are only two or three big players covering the majority of the market, with multiple brand labels (Ricoh). There will also be two or three smaller, second tier manufacturers whose product quality and price will limit their penetration to only the most demanding customers. An example is Xerox, who completely exited the SOHO market, and is spending all of their R&D on the highest of the highest. Mid market companies will outsource the "ends" of the market, buying rebranded versions of other company's products for their top or bottom line products (Toshiba).

[schooltech]

I tend to agree with everyone on the board. B003ace, I believe, is leaning more towards what will happen in the future. There seems to be, at least with the small machines, more of a disposable future. And, yes, the larger 35 & 45 cpm will probably be flooded with customer replaceable units (CRU's.)

As machines' costs of manufacturing reduce, businesses will have an easier time just buying 'boxes' off of the internet, and when it breaks, use the built-in warranty. I'm thinking that there won't be highly-commissioned salespeople attempting to push boxes, then having service techs fixing the box for 60 months.

And I also agree that color copiers will become even more common, and their CPC's will be getting down to 1.5 to 2 cpc on even the smaller machines. I do believe that instead of the higher-volume machines, most businesses will be able to buy 2 or 3 'workgroup' copiers for different areas in the business.

Since I work for a school district, and I used to work in the private sector for over 10 years, I see some differences here. Here, I buy boxes (only b&w) cheap that are a few years old, then repair them and have the teachers and aides tear them up. I've been asked about color, and I tell them, "Right now, I'm just working on upgrading the 15 year old copiers you currently have, so I'm not even thinking about color."

When I started with the school district, the technology-on the copier end, was really bad. I've now, in the last year, been able to upgrade copiers that ACTUALLY PRINT and maybe even get them to LAN-FAX.

Anyway, I guess that some of it depends on the location and industry of where the technology is being placed. Where I'm at, copier technology is improving, but only by me working my butt off to get the district upgraded. In the private sector, part of the technology would depend on the history of the business and the eagerness, aggressiveness and determination of the business.

We will have fax machines in the district for years to come, because, "We just like it that way." I am not kidding; this is what I've been told by many people. They didn't know that copiers could be printed to, and that was partly because of the person I replaced, but nonetheless they were not aware.

There will also be people that will refuse to change CRU's, no matter how easy they are to swap out. So, I do believe that techs will be around. There will probably be less 'techs' and more of a hybrid tech/IT person that will be doing more IT and less tech work. We'll see what the future brings.