At Domino, we ‘Do more’ than provide high-quality production line printers and consumables. We are committed to helping our customers keep their production lines running at optimal capacity no matter what. That is why we go the extra mile, with service and support solutions that provide the business insight needed to improve performance and profits.
In our latest Q&A we sit down with Tony McNulty, Chief Product Officer at Domino, to discuss Domino’s approach to service and support, and get some insight into how Domino is helping customers to increase overall equipment effectiveness, reduce waste, and fulfil wider business goals.
What service and support solutions does Domino offer, how has this changed over time?
We have a suite of different service products to offer our customers, including the peace of mind of an all-inclusive service and support contract known as SafeGuard. SafeGuard is a fixed term, fixed price service agreement, covering any additional support a customer might need – ranging from labour to spare parts – and can be offered for up to seven years from the point of sale.
We always recognise that we’re not just supporting the equipment, we’re supporting the customer, so in addition to the standard services we offer expert advice to help customers improve their production performance. We also offer an optional annual optimisation service, which encompasses a comprehensive system inspection to help identity any potential problems with machinery before they develop, and so avoid any unnecessary downtime. Coupled with this service we offer refresher training to ensure operators are using our coding solutions in the safest and most efficient way. During this planned work, our field engineers can offer system improvement recommendations to help optimise production and costs.
Our aftermarket services are evolving in line with the widespread adoption of Industry 4.0 and ongoing digitalisation of production lines and warehouse systems. We recognise that our customers’ needs are constantly changing, and so we are developing and broadening our offerings with this in mind.
We offer remote monitoring using cloud-based services, which allow printer performance information to be viewed from anywhere in world, via mobile phone, tablet, or computer. The dashboard is accessible by customers and Domino service support staff and provides an overview of how a production line is running in real time, this information can be used by on-site staff, and service engineers, to identify potential changes in output / performance that might indicate a wider issue.
Alongside this, we have an augmented reality (AR) support application, SafeGuard AR, as an extension to our aftermarket services. With SafeGuard AR, our experts can connect with our customers, OEM partners, and Domino service engineers to remotely manage complex installations, check line performance, and identify and fix problems with machinery as and when they arise. The ability to ‘see’ with a customer’s eyes exactly what is occurring on a line allows service engineers to gain a better understanding of a problem than afforded by traditional phone support.
How does Domino ensure reliable and efficient supply of inks and consumables, and how do you support customers in choosing the right options for their needs?
The vast majority of our consumables are developed and manufactured in house, helping to ensure consistent reliable supply for our customers. In the UK alone, this equates to the production of roughly 3 million litres of ink each year, from our specialist inks facility in Liverpool. All genuine Domino inks, fluids, and other consumables are developed and tested for optimal performance with our technologies.
To make things easier for our customers we also offer fixed-price consumable replenishment for all inks, ribbons, filters, and other consumables via Domino SafeSupply. SafeSupply takes away the hassle of having to reorder consumables and gives our customers the certainty that they will receive stock as and when they need it, so they're not going to run out and suffer a potential line stoppage.
When customers need support with a new application or substrate testing, we can help validate their requirements against our range of technologies and provide insight into the optimal solution for different requirements. We have a team of experts to provide additional, strategic support in selecting and testing solutions. It’s all about asking the right questions and understanding the limits and capabilities of the customer’s substrate. Once we have information on the substrate and the application, we can refer to previous sample tests to find possible solutions. We have a searchable database of previously coded materials and the results for different inks and technologies, as well as a searchable catalogue of results from extensive in-house testing.
In our sampling labs, we also have specialist equipment that helps us to check the quality of the code in different sector-specific environments, including a high-speed conveyor system, and an industrial steam steriliser to test code adherence for samples which require a retort process. We also carry out code verification for barcodes, QR codes, and Data Matrix codes using a 2D-code verifier.
How have your service and support offerings changed in recent years?
One of our main strategic aims is in offering closed-loop solutions to customers, and our service and support offerings are a key part of this. As a business, we are more than just a coding and marking provider – we offer full, closed-loop product coding and verification solutions, that support our customers with minimising errors, waste, and downtime. The ideal closed-loop solution would be an integrated mix of hardware, software and services. This includes data management and deployment from our coding automation solutions, cloud-based machine monitoring, code verification from our vision offering, and service and support to help our customers keep everything running smoothly.
In terms of customer demand, we are undoubtedly seeing more of our customers requesting and expecting outcome-focused solutions, which focus on optimising the overall performance of a production line. It’s not hard to see the reason why – downtime is frustrating at the best of times, but at times of unpredictable and unprecedented demand, machine failure can be disastrous. By design, solutions which optimise the overall performance of a production line, and focus on preventing issues before they become downtime, help to reduce the risks of machine failure and keep lines running.
This change in mindset requires the provision of more information on the overall health of manufacturing systems – and solutions in place to help identify and rectify issues before they become downtime. Our recent developments, including our cloud-based services and SafeGuard AR, are helping us to move in this direction. Our cloud-based services provide our customers, and service engineers with an overview of how production lines are performing, helping to identify changes in output which may require preventative action, while SafeGuard AR allows our service engineers to instruct customers in real time, to support cleaning, minor maintenance, or recalibration to prevent downtime.
We have expanded the capability of our SafeGuard AR programme to include live language translation, to allow us to support our global customer base from our technical helpdesks anywhere in the world. This has been of huge benefit to our customers, allowing our service staff to seamlessly communicate with customers across borders. It’s also proved popular in regions with distinct local dialects, providing the capability for customers to communicate in the language that they feel the most comfortable with, regardless of where the helpdesk is located.
Have these developments necessitated any design changes for Domino products and solutions?
Our focus on helping customers to increase uptime and productivity requires machinery designed with ease of service in mind for both production line workers and engineers, and which allows for remote collaboration to ensure that customers can self-serve with minimal guidance. As such, our latest generation machinery is all designed to be more intuitive, accessible, and user friendly when it comes to service and support. Production line staff can easily access instruction videos for maintenance, cleaning, and simple repairs, and products are designed with serviceable parts which can be easily replaced by staff on site. In addition, we have developed our service infrastructure provide remote assistance via our augmented reality app, which is supported by our global network of service engineers who are on hand remotely, or on site.
Of course, our customer’s production line staff also have a key role to play in production line optimisation – and we want to ensure that they are well equipped both to use our solutions, and to carry out small repairs and maintenance where this supports our customers’ goals. As such, we are developing out staff training capabilities, to ensure that our customers receive and retain the skills and knowledge needed to use machines to their optimal capacity, including: new starter training in how to use machines effectively; training in maintenance and servicing to ensure that machines can be kept running at optimal levels; and training in software/monitoring solutions to look for opportunities to optimise production lines.
How do you expect service and support offerings to evolve in the future?
With ongoing digitalisation of manufacturing processes, it is inevitable that aftermarket services will continue to evolve, with the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence helping to fuel the shift towards new outcome-focused solutions and predictive maintenance. The next stage of this development would be in offering outcome-focused contracts, with the assurance of guaranteed machine performance, and the possibility of cost per accurate/validated code.
At Domino, we are developing our aftermarket services with this in mind, with the provision of cloud communications, increased use of sensors to provide production performance statistics, and remote connections that deliver additional value to our customers. The idea here is that both our customers, and our service and support staff have access to machine data remotely, and can identify changes in performance, irrespective of where the machinery might be in the world.
The data collected can be used to baseline how a machine and/or production line is functioning, with the option to send alerts when performance degradation is spotted. This information can be accessible to on-site workers who can implement fixes and improvements and also to our service and support staff, who can use the data to offer more customised services aligned to a manufacturer’s defined key performance indicators or preferred outcomes. This type of proactive insight will allow us to move away from the traditional, reactive ‘break and fix’ model to one of predictive maintenance.
Of course, with a switch towards predictive maintenance, the role of the service engineer will also change. At Domino, we have a vision of a new ‘Engineer of the Future’ and are upskilling our service and support staff with these new developments in mind, to focus on data-driven decision making and customer outcomes. In the future, it is likely that engineers will require a different way of thinking and soft skills in supporting customers. Their technical expertise, combined with the ability to interpret and act upon historical and real-time customer data, will underpin a partnership model that can enable true overall equipment effectiveness to minimise waste, optimise production performance and profits, and ensure modern production lines are equipped to deal with even the most volatile of circumstances.
Finally, do you have any interesting case studies that demonstrate how your service and support offerings have benefited customers?
One of our aftermarket success stories involved the provision of SafeGuard and Domino Cloud to a major beverage manufacturer utilising Domino’s Ax-Series inkjet printers. The customer realised the benefit of Domino Cloud with remote diagnostics and telephone support enabling quick resolution of line fixes on a number of occasions.
The customer was also able to obtain additional business insight from monitoring production line printer logs and production performance via the Domino Cloud. It was noted that more issues were occurring during the nightshift, and this was deemed to be due to a lack of training. The customer was able to request additional training from Domino, which lead to significant reduction in machine faults, and an increase in productivity and overall equipment effectiveness during the nightshift.
For more information about our aftermarket services and solutions, please visit our services page.