What is Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) in Manufacturing?

Total cost of ownership (TCO) is a way to calculate the true cost of your assets. It encompasses the initial purchase price of an item, plus the costs of operation.

What are the ongoing costs of coding and labeling?

Industrial inkjet printers have their own specific set of running costs similar to a car.

Servicing

Production line machinery requires regular servicing. That means engineer callouts, which incurs costs.

Replacement parts

Sometimes mechanical parts need replacing. Unless your printer is under warranty, you will need to pay for them.

Downtime

When your printing technology is being serviced, it cannot be used. Downtime costs money through lost production and lost profits.

Consumables

The more you use your printers, the more you will spend on standard consumables to keep your printers up and running like ink, makeup and ribbon.

Energy

It also costs money to actually power your printers. Energy efficiency is key.

Does it actually cost more to keep aging industrial equipment?

Similar to running with outdated and slow office equipment to run create complex designs or crunch data and financial reports, persevering with old equipment can be a costly mistake for any business.

The cost of using older technology increases with time, creating a false economy.

  • Services are needed more frequently, meaning more service calls
  • Downtime (both scheduled and unscheduled) increases, meaning more disruption to production
  • Replacement parts become more expensive as technology manufacturers phase out support for older equipment

CIJ printing: What does total cost of ownership truly mean for manufacturers?

  • By Eric Corzine
  • March 04, 2016
  • General
  • Beverage
  • Food
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What is total cost of ownership (TCO)?

Total cost of ownership (TCO) is a way to calculate the true cost of your assets. It encompasses the initial purchase price of an item, plus the costs of operation. It forces you to think about how much a product will cost you across its lifespan - and that’s important. Because, for any item, the initial purchase cost is only part of the equation.

What are the ongoing costs of coding and labeling?

Common sense will tell you that different products have different running costs. Cars, for example, require fuel, insurance, road tax and so on. The industrial inkjet printers you use for your coding, marking and labeling operations have their own specific set of running costs too.

Servicing

Production line machinery requires regular servicing. That means engineer callouts, which costs.

Replacement parts

Sometimes mechanical parts need replacing. Unless your printer is under warranty, you will need to pay for them.

Downtime (scheduled)

When your printing technology is being serviced, it cannot be used. Downtime costs money through lost production and lost profits.

Downtime (unscheduled)

Sometimes downtime is unscheduled - such as when your printing technology breaks down. This can be extremely costly, halting operations until an engineer can get you back up and running.

Consumables

The more you use your printers, the more you will spend on standard consumables to keep your printers up and running like ink, makeup and ribbon.

Energy

Of course it also costs money to actually power your printers. Energy efficiency is key.

The hidden costs of aging equipment

If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it - That’s the approach taken by many manufacturers when it comes to their coding technology. Upgrading to new printers is perceived to be an unnecessary hassle - especially in the absence of capital funds.

However, similar to running with outdated and slow office equipment to run create complex designs or crunch data and financial reports, persevering with old equipment can be a costly mistake for any business.

The cost of using older technology increases with time, creating a false economy.

  • Services are needed more frequently, meaning more engineer callouts
  • Downtime (both scheduled and unscheduled) increases, meaning more disruption to production
  • Replacement parts become more expensive as technology manufacturers phase out support for older equipment

Slashing service costs from $750 to $4

Here at Domino, our UK arm once studied production at a major beverage manufacturer, comparing the cost of running legacy coding technology against the Domino A-Series inkjet printing on a high-speed canning line. The projected annual cost of servicing alone was reduced from $750 to $4 per printer, while scheduled downtime was slashed from four hours to ten minutes.

You could realize similar savings - let alone the time savings of our old A-Series industrial printers compared to running our current Ax-Series lineup with its IIoT capabilities. 

Coding and labeling technology has evolved dramatically in the last few years, let alone the last twenty. The latest printers are faster, more efficient, more reliable and cheaper to run - with huge improvements including the ability to run them via a network, etc. So while some manufacturers may be daunted by initial purchase prices, seemingly paradoxically, buying new equipment could actually save you money.

And now you may not have to pay any upfront costs at all.

Say goodbye to upfront costs with operational leasing

Some processing and packaging machinery manufacturers - like us - offer operational leasing programs such as Domino Relax. That means you can access brand new technology with no upfront costs, driving manufacturing improvements as well as cost savings. Equipment, servicing, training and multi-year warranties are bundled into fixed monthly payments. Alternatively you can pay per code, which is perfect if you have large seasonal fluctuations in your throughput.

It means the money you are spending to keep legacy technology running could be used to lease brand new technology instead.

To wrap up...

Manufacturers face a number of conflicting pressures. There’s a constant dichotomy between improving the quality and speed of production, while keeping operational costs as low as possible. Upfront costs dissuade cost-sensitive manufacturers from upgrading their coding and labeling technology. Yet it can be even more expensive to persevere with outdated equipment. And for businesses where capital budgets simply won’t stretch to new technology, leasing offers a viable way to transform efficiency and improve bottom line without any of the upfront costs.

 

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