Ricoh 2001 Annual Report Download - page 11

8
S o lid ifyin g O u r F o u n d a t io n s
While shifting into gear on the Ricoh
Docum ent Highway as a provider of solu-
tions, we also continue working on the
fundam entals in standalone and network-
connective equipment.
Our operations are moving up through
four levels. At the bottom is standalone
equipment, which includes plain-paper
copiers. On level two is network-connective
equipment, encom passing MFPs, laser print-
ers, scanners, and utilities. On the third level
are printing solutions, with docum ent solu-
tions representing the fourth level.
As we m ove toward docum ent solutions,
most of our efforts and resulting earnings
will concentrate on the ways in which we can
help our custom ers get more out of their sys-
tem s and lower the total costs of ownership.
Why are the fundam entals so im portant?
It is because as a m anufacturer we recognize
that we must push the technological
envelopes of our core competence to support
solutions innovations. As part of that drive,
we are working to combine our software
capabilities with progress in basic materials,
processing, production, and system s develop-
ment technologies.
Such efforts led long ago to the shift from
analog to digital equipment and, m ore
recently, from m onochrome to color offer-
ings. These were obviously m ilestones. But
our real success in recent tim es has been in
innovating a host of under-the-hood tech-
nologies that make our digital systems more
affordable and efficient than those of our
competition.
For exam ple, we developed plastic mirrors
that perform more efficiently than glass
counterparts at less cost and with more
imaging flexibility. Micron-level chem icals
technology helped us create optical photo-
conductor drums for all copier and printer
sizes to deliver additional perform ance and
durability. Our transfer belts, which transfer
toner to paper, replaced energy-wasting coro-
nas and cut costs by eliminating the need for
fans.
A recent shining achievement was the
technology that went into the Im agio Neo
350 ( Aficio 1035) , an environmental cham-
pion described later in this special report. To
enable the am azingly fast start-ups of this
machine from sleep m ode, we developed a
fixer roller that is 0.4mm thin— one-seventh
the thickness of conventional counterparts.
This in itself was a trem endous achievem ent.
But the real success is that the new roller is
just as durable as earlier models, and thus
has broad potential across our product line.
Equally important, we created a toner that
fuses at lower tem peratures and thereby saves
energy.
Making better products is obviously
important. It is just as critical to bring them
to market faster at lower cost. This thinking
lay behind our development of an im age-pro-
cessing large-scale integrated circuit ( LSI)
that functions as m iddleware and is based on
a proprietary ultraparallel engine core.
Middleware runs on predetermined software
comm ands. The LSI is roughly 1% of the
price of high-end, general-purpose proces-
sors, can be developed very quickly, and dra-
matically accelerates im aging. It controls
specialized imaging tasks for specific models,
correcting, enlarging, shrinking, and gradat-
ing images in real tim e. As a result, we can
build far m ore flexibility into our products
than ever before. The Im agio Neo 220/270
series of digital copiers was the world’s first
office equipment to incorporate such m iddle-
ware.
From m aterials to advanced devices,
Ricoh will continue to innovate the technolo-
gies that power the office equipment system s
of today and tom orrow.
TH E RIC O H DO C U M E N T HIG H W A Y