The Ricoh Digital or Offset Calculator is an interactive spreadsheet that uses the printer’s own data regarding hourly rates, finance and consumables costs to determine the break points between the processes.
The calculator covers five common job types, leaflets, posters, folders, brochures and business cards. Parameters including run length, simplex or duplex printing and number of colours are used to produce a breakdown of production cost, labour cost and overall job cost to help printers choose the most appropriate production method.
As it relies on the printer’s own data, should any aspects of production change it is possible to update the information to ensure the comparisons remain meaningful.
It was developed by Ricoh Netherlands, where it has been adopted by printers to work out the most efficient production methods.
