RICOH, an award-winning global printer manufacturer and service provider, announced the expansion of its partnership with AMFG, a leading provider of manufacturing MES and 3D printing workflow automation software. Since the partnership’s inception in 2020, RICOH’s 3D printing services brand Ricoh 3D has benefited from AMFG’s automated quotation functionality, allowing the company’s customers to easily order 3D printed parts instantly.
Following a successful two-year partnership, Ricoh 3D has increased its investment in AMFG’s solution, incorporating a number of new features to maximize the software’s capabilities.
3D Printing Workflow Automation
For the past few years, Ricoh 3D has equipped AMFG specifically to streamline its client-facing processes, allowing customers to order parts from the company’s website in a more efficient manner. Customers can use AMFG’s instant quotation tool to directly upload their files and receive an accurate quotation in a matter of seconds. Once an order is confirmed, Ricoh 3D’s projects team can prepare the file for production by utilizing the software’s extensive auto-analysis and repair tools.
With a higher number of returning customers and a significant simplification of their production processes, RICOH has decided to enhance their customer journey even further by upgrading to AMFG’s ULTIMATE license, reflecting their own company’s journey towards critical end-part manufacturing.
AMFG’s implementation will provide critical insights into Ricoh 3D’s medical part production, monitoring operational progress and ensuring that parts maintain consistently exceptional quality levels where needed the most, with features such as machine monitoring, build-preparation software preparation, automated production scheduling, and integration with shipping providers. This provision of full traceability enables RICOH to meet the stringent ISO:13485 standards required by their medical industry customers.
“When we started the business, we were using manual methods of communicating with customers and transferring parts to people for production. AMFG has totally streamlined that. For example, quoting used to take us over 30 minutes, – now it can take us less than two minutes. For us, it’s been a game changer. It’s streamlined our manufacturing process right from start to finish.”
– Richard Minifie, a Design Engineer at Ricoh 3D
AMFG’s software has been integrated with Ricoh 3D’s business intelligence platform, build preparation software, and logistics provider. This level of integration provides RICOH with a unified digital thread through which they can manage the full scope of their AM operations.
Matt Martin, VP EMEA at AMFG commented, “Our journey with RICOH started a couple of years ago and their transition towards end-parts manufacturing and the complexities of scaling production, are challenges representative of much of the enterprise 3D printing market. RICOH constantly challenge us with new obstacles in their evolving workflow, and our partnership is driving rapid product development to benefit both them, and the industry as a whole.”
