A blog/newsletter from Marco Technologies:
On the evening of May 2, 1878, the night shift at the Washburn A Mill in Minneapolis clocked in.
Nobody thought twice about the air. It was full of flour dust — the same haze that eventually settled over everything in the largest flour mill in the world.
At around 7 p.m., two millstones ran dry and rubbed together. One spark met that haze. The explosion leveled the mill and was heard ten miles away in St. Paul.
All because of dust. Something that was so normal, no one saw the potential threat.
Printers often do the same thing at manufacturing facilities. So in this newsletter, we’ll explore what might be accumulating right under your nose.
Costs that go unseen
Print environments in manufacturing don’t really get designed. They grow, from a copier in the front office to label printers on the floor, a wide-format device in engineering, and personal printers IT forgot existed.
Some of them might be a great match for the work they need to do. Some might be wasting expensive ink on internal documents. And some — or all of them — might frustrate staff constantly and interrupt work.
And when everyone’s responsible for them, no one is.
Not surprisingly, when we first partner with manufacturers, most of them can’t put a dollar figure on their print spend. How could they, when it’s scattered across vendor invoices, supply orders, and service contracts that don’t talk to each other?
Here’s what total print costs include:
- Equipment costs
- Paper
- Ink/toner
- Any additional finishing supplies
- Electricity
- Repair bills
- IT time
- Print-related downtime
None of it looks like much on its own. But all of these costs add up the same way dust does.
In fact, print is typically a business’s third highest cost after rent and payroll, burning through 1%–3% of annual revenue.
Do we have your attention now? Good. Because it gets worse.
Cybersecurity risks where you least suspect
Ransomware attacks on manufacturers rose 56% in 2025 alone.
Most of the conversations around ransomware prevention focus on networks, servers, and OT systems. People tend to forget about printers, which is exactly why they’re becoming a problem.
A networked printer isn’t a dumb machine anymore.
Modern printers:
- Have IP addresses
- Use memory
- Run software
- Are connected to your network
Modern printers are more like laptops than ever, and they’re going without basic protections in quite a few businesses.
That means they can be exploited fairly easily. And if they’re decommissioned without being wiped, whatever data they’re holding walks out the door with them.
For manufacturers in defense supply chains, print security risks absolutely can’t keep going ignored. CMMC and NIST SP 800-171 both require controls around controlled unclassified information — and that information moves through print infrastructure as often as it moves through a server.
Zebra issues that get normalized
Walk into a lot of manufacturing plants, and you’ll find the same thing: a shelf holding two or three spare Zebra printers. That’s not a supply strategy. That’s a workaround, and it’s an expensive one.
It happens because a lot of manufacturers don’t have a lot of options.
Even when they have managed print, those contracts typically stop at the front office. Copiers and office printers get monitored and maintained; label printers, barcode scanners, and thermal devices on the floor don’t. So when one of those fails mid-shift, there’s no early warning and no one covering it — just a line that stops moving until someone finds a fix.
To be clear, stockpiling backups doesn’t solve that. It just moves the cost from “the printer failed” to “we’re paying to store printers we hope we never need,” and it still doesn’t catch the failure before it happens.
What can fix all of this?
We’ve seen the issues unmaintained Zebras create for manufacturers, which is why we will also support Zebras as part of our managed print solution.
But it’s not just about Zebras. All print devices that are actively monitored show warning signs before they quit — worn print heads, failing sensors, parts nearing end of life. When you catch that early, your line keeps moving, and you’re not stuck with expensive workarounds.
All of the other problems — the hidden costs, the security exposure, the downtime — are also related. When nobody has full visibility into the print environment, nothing gets caught until it’s already caused a problem.
Whether you maintain your printers in-house or work with a provider, the real fix starts with an assessment that maps every device, every location, and every cost, office and floor together.
If you only have a few printers, it’s fairly simple. If you have a lot of devices across multiple locations, it can get time-consuming. You can always reach out to us to request one.
We also offer complimentary consultations to help you see if we’re a good fit.
Bottom line, we’ve found that most manufacturers are overpaying on print by 30%–40%. If you’d like us to see how much we could help you save, let’s talk.
