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Reliability and the total cost of ownership

January 5, 2012 by Adam Ortlieb — Associate Director, Marketing, Seiko Instruments

Maintaining a competitive cost structure is an obvious requirement in order to be able to offer an effective pricing model. On the other hand, by design, kiosks operate in rugged conditions relative to most other computing environments. The application is unattended, often outside, with a higher probaility for harsh treatment. How does this impact component selection?

Regardless of the design challenges the application presents, downtime is simply not an option. A down system can trigger an expensive service call, significantly diminish customer goodwill, and prevent end users from completing transactions, hurting revenue. Retro-fitting replacement components in the field is painful and often not realistic. Failing components in the field are a surefire way to doom a project.

To this end, consumer-grade components should be carefully scrutinized early on to determine how they will perform over time. In addition, based on the potential for high failure rates and performance issues, choosing suppliers for perpherals and other components purely based on rock-bottom pricing is an inherenlty risky strategy. Beyond initial purchase price, the long-term durability and performance of peripherals should be evaluated in order to capture a true picture of total costs.

How to assess peripheral reliability

Multiple measures can be used to gauge the lifetime performance of a printer. "Total service life" is a great measure for how well critical components will perform over time. "Mean time between failure" (MTBF) is another widely used yardstick for specifying hardware reliability. The ideal approach is to choose a printer that is certifed to perform well beyond expected usage in a very high transaction volume environment. For a benchmark, consider minimum service life ratings of 150 km of total printing and 1 million or more cuts. This level of durability is equivalent to approximately 1 million printouts. At 200 printouts per day, it would take 14 years to reach this milestone – a point well beyond the total expected system operating life. By choosing a printer with this level of durability, you would greatly exceed usage requirements helping ensure very long-term reliability.

Avoiding paper jams is also critical to ensuring trouble-free reliability. Precision engineering, use of proven heavy-duty components, and rigorous production quality control systems all play an important role in consistently achieving this. The right operating sensors as well as the option for a looping presenter are also key. By preventing the user from accessing the receipt before it is printed and cut, the looping presenter is extremely effective in avoiding illegible printouts and paper jams.

Does the paper matter?

Media selection is another important consideration for performance over time. Most importantly, you want to avoid using paper that has not been qualified by the printer manufacturer. Cutting corners with cheap paper may provide up-front benefits, but any savings can quickly evaporate when the unqualified paper begins leaving excessive residue build-up on print heads in the field, triggering unwanted maintenance calls. A reliable supplier will complete a rigorous qualification process for specified media, ensuring worry-free use in the field.

Reliable perpheral performance is a fundamental requirement for successfully negotiating the pilot and rollout stages of a kiosk deployment. By carefullly balancing the desire for cost savings with the imperative for quality and trouble-free operation, you can avoid the enourmous pitfalls and skyrocketing costs that can plague your project if components do not hold up in the real world.

About Adam Ortlieb

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