Office Printers with Built-in GPRS Modems
January 29th, 2010 Posted in General, Industry NewsOffice printers are now able to summon an engineer or order replacement ink cartridges automatically – after Konica Minolta started fitting its models with built-in mobile phones. Wireless Logic is providing modems to the printer vendor that will support conventional GPRS enabled SIM cards for machine to machine connectivity.
Filling up the paper tray is still the responsibility of the person who only got half the 30 page document they expected.
Once a SIM is installed and activated, Konica Minolta can monitor each of its devices; usage, consumable usage and performance. It automatically re-orders consumables once the supply is running low, and can also diagnose any faults or issues immediately; sending an email to the customer organisation and mobilising Konica Minolta to call out an engineer.
As a result, Konica Minolta has seen a reduction in its billing queue of 50 per cent and is experiencing significant savings attributed to early diagnosis and rectification of faults.
Each printing unit is fitted with a GPRS module, embedded with a Wireless Logic SIM card that is remotely activated when the device is dispatched and set up. Each SIM card is given a fixed IP address, with a choice of operator, allowing two way communication between the printer and Konica Minolta.
Via Konica Minolta’s ‘CS Remote Care’ service, this is then managed and monitored via Wireless Logic’s ‘ManageNet’ secure private network management platform.
Brent Mayo, Customer Support Manager, Konica Minolta says: “This technology has brought many benefits to our customers, such as automatic ordering of consumables and automatic logging of faults, which are directly logged into Konica Minolta’s ERP system. This saves time and means we know of faults before our customers do; allowing us to be more proactive in effecting a repair. We have also seen a significant reduction in our billing queue – previously done manually, this is done automatically through Wireless Logic’s service”
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