New Facility Established to Serve Customers Better

Fuji Xerox Development And Sales Jointly Establish an Open Innovation Hub to Create the Future of Print Communications

To generate diverse communication methods throughout the printing workflow, Fuji Xerox Co., Ltd. will establish a new open innovation facility (hereafter, the facility) beyond spring of 2018. The facility, which aims to create new values hand-in-hand with customers, will serve as a global hub in providing a point of contact for collaboration with customers and partner companies.

To be built inside the Ebina Center—Fuji Xerox’s base for technology development located in Ebina City, Kanagawa, Japan—the facility will allow not only sales personnel and systems engineers, but also development engineers and manufacturing personnel to discuss directly with customers to solve communication/business issues swiftly, and reinforce marketing functions as a global manufacturer.

With the aim of continuously creating new value amid rapid environmental changes, Fuji Xerox has reinvented conventional production printing services as “graphic communication services,” which encompass not only upstream communication planning and creative processes, but also automation systems and timely delivery of printed material to the right place at the right time. The facility planned for opening in 2018 will serve as a base for working jointly with customers to create new value in this field of graphic communication services, and is taking on broad opinions by working with customers and partners from the construction phase.

Upon completion, the facility will contain approximately 7,000 square meters of space, including a zone for testing technologies, and bring Fuji Xerox’s and Fujifilm Corporation’s digital printing equipment, software, and related technologies under one roof. By making and verifying comprehensive workflow-related proposals, the facility aims to enable customers to improve the productivity and add value to their businesses.

To generate innovations at the forefront of technologies and business models, external partner companies will be invited to share their technologies and knowhow to bring open innovation to the entire print value chain, i.e. from upstream processes to downstream processes, and support the transformation of the communication businesses. Fuji Xerox will also continuously improve the facility’s ICT (information and communications technology) infrastructure to make the facility a hub for close communication with far-flung spokes such as the Integrated Customer Experience Center in Thailand, and also with Xerox Corporation.

The society and industry are undergoing a worldwide transformation, dubbed the Fourth Industrial Revolution, spurred by breakthroughs in a range of technology fields, most notably the IoT (Internet of Things) and AI (artificial intelligence). At the same time, the lives of people are changing in a myriad of ways due to internationalization, increasing participation in society by a diverse working force, and the need for new ways of working. As technologies and communities change, tastes and values are diversifying and becoming more complex, and against this backdrop, the advantages of digital printing, which include agility, flexibility, and adaptability, to become even more pronounced as a means of communication that promotes mutual understanding among individuals as well as between organizations and individuals.

As a pioneer in the field of graphic communication, Fuji Xerox will endeavor to work with customers and partners to develop a wide variety of communication systems and contribute to the promotion of better mutual understanding in this new IoT society.