I always believe having 2 identical printers is an advantage for a production house.
Aaron
While I fully agree and take this approach with my own IT equipment, it is not without potential risk. The advantages are things like parts compatibility, reduced training, reduced supplies inventory. The risk is that if you choose unwisely, you now have multiple machines that are lemons. Diversification, while more costly, reduces the risks from being overly dependent on a single manufacturer, supplier, maintenance provider and of choosing a lemon of a product. When buying two similar pieces of equipment, I like to analyze them for unique features and determine if that uniqueness will provide extra value. For example, one printer might be better at dealing with sheet media while the other was better at canvas. Assuming that you do both sheet and canvas, you might find that having two different printers provides a value greater than the extra costs. Yes, its a contrived example, but I think the concept behind the analysis is clear. Until you get into ridiculously expensive items, most manufacturers have a particular target set of features/capabilities that they prioritize to meet their price objective.
