Ricoh is expanding its European Centre of Excellence for production printing, the Customer Experience Centre (CEC) in Telford, with a new executive reception and briefing centre.
In its first year, Ricoh’s Customer Experience Centre hosted several product launches, plus many demonstrations and executive briefings, as well as events for dealers, publishers and industry associations.
It was established to enable leaders from the graphic arts sectors to see a variety of end-to-end workflows and production processes first-hand as they might exist in their own production environment.
‘It is fantastic to see the value of the Customer Experience Centre in showcasing our multi-platform manufacturing and solutions excellence but also in creating productive discussions with our clients,’ explained Benoit Chatelard, vice president, Production Printing Business Group, Ricoh Europe. ‘The working environment allows visitors to focus on the elements of their operation that require expert assessment. But at the same time, it allows them to see how other aspects of their business can be supported. After opening the facility, we soon realised we would have to expand our meeting and presentation facilities to meet the growing demand for visits to Telford from senior figures within our industry. The new briefing centre will open in Spring 2016 and will enhance the customer experience still further.’
During its first year, thousands of print samples have been produced at the CEC for continuous feed clients on both the InfoprintTM 5000 and the Pro VC60000, plus wide format and cut sheet samples too.
A highlight of the year was the progress made by Ricoh’s European Media Qualification Programme. Adding to an already comprehensive list of qualified media, testing of hundreds of different types of media has been completed, and the company is also beginning to apply its considerable experience in high speed ink jet technology to continuous feed media qualification.
