Visiting the Longest Dark Room in Asia at Canon Technical Excellence Centre (CTEC)

Sprawling across 40,000 sqft, the new addition to Canon India’s arsenal, Canon Technical Excellence Centre (CTEC) bumps it into a new league, possibly one of its own. Well equipped with highly sophisticated tools, CTEC has senior professionals for simulations and training direct engineers and partners. To provide a comprehensive learning approach focused on technical, software and intellectual skill development.

At Canon they believe & follow the philosophy, Kyosei , signifying “living and working together for the common good”, this infrastructure is a small step towards their commitment in complying with Kyosei philosophy and working for the common good. CTEC was inaugurated in Dec, 2016 by Mr. Kazutada Kobayashi, President & CEO Canon India, located in Noida.

• Learning – CTEC is the learning hub and used for conducting technical trainings, demonstrations, product testing and simulation. Partners as well as Canon engineers can enhance their technical skills from very basic to vastly innovative creation. CTEC conducts 5k-6k of man-hours training every year covering more than 1500 engineers nationally. Engineers learn without the rest so that they turn out the best.
• Invention – With DreamLabo a viable alternative to silver halide technology , Canon brings in an innovative ideas which is not just about colour and output but about recreating memories in a way that they remain alive for a lifetime, The spectacular HD printing can make one bring back and cherish those moments
• Rejuvenation – Refreshing the old leading to regeneration, driven by the philosophy of Kyosei, Canon always endeavour to rejuvenate the environment. At CTEC Canon ensures that all the recyclable items are reused efficiently and non-recyclable items are scrapped in an environment friendly was, as per statutory requirements.
• Expertise – CTEC is a hub for repairs of high end cameras which demands qualified engineers. This facility in houses one of the best dark rooms in Asia measuring 33m in length and covering an area of 2192 sq feet. Lens adjustment of Up to 800mm along with all the tools as recommended by Canon Ink which results in high precision repairs work. Canon Technical Excellence Center compliments the goal of delighting you always with its skill and expertise.
• Responsibility – CTEC takes vital steps towards nurturing the environment and immensely supports sustainable development as the rooftop is labelled as Social Responsibility. In order to conserve energy, this floor has a series of solar panels installed. Investment has also been made for RO plants for water purification, thus playing an important part in sustainable development.

Apart from training personnel’s, CTEC has a state of the art repair centre to service and repair all the Canon products such as DSLR camera, printers, projectors, copiers – under one roof. The facilities provided by this centre include refurbishing, regeneration of copiers & printers, refilling of toner cartridges and even recycling of products for safeguarding environment.

The entire premise is divided into 5 floors, each for different purpose like repair, training, demonstration, etc. We started our tour from the basement, which was dedicated for Rejuvenation. All the old machines from the field are brought here and is refurbished. We also observed another section in this area devoted to recycling and disposing the e-waste. The irreparable machines are recycled or scraped here as per the government norms related to e-waste disposal.

The ground floor, on one side, we observed an HD Photo Zone illustrating the high-end commercial products like Oce and IPF Pro Printer. Canon’s first inkjet production photo printer for printing wedding photographs, Dream Labo was also displayed here. There were two units, one was used for training purposes and the other for customer demonstration. On the other side of the ground floor was the Toner Refilling Plant, where we could notice some used toner cartridges getting refilled. This also included an advanced compression plant to maintain air quality.

The Training Centre was located on the next floor, preparing the next generation of Service Engineers, Business Imaging Solutions IDC Partner Engineers and Managers. There was also a separate Level 3 Technical Help Desk located on this floor. Workshops and in-house learning sessions are frequently organized to make the engineers well adept with the products. The engineers are also given field trainings to identify and rectify problems in the products. Product demonstrations is given to have a better understanding about the products. Partners as well as Canon engineers through the trainings and demonstrations enhance their skills from basic to proficient levels of products.

The next level presented another important facet of this center, the Repair Centre. This is where Inkjet and laser printers (warranty or DOA cases) are repaired here. The spare parts are re-engineered and reused as well. The parts which can’t be reused is recycled or disposed as per government norms. There is a separate section for fixing films and defective PCBs are repaired & reused for machines under contracts.

On the third floor, there is a separate Camera Repair Center formed by consolidating Delhi-NCR region repair centers. The entire range of Canon DSLR, lenses, projector and broadcasting cameras are repaired on this floor.

Lastly, the rooftop. It’s called Social Responsibility floor and Canon’s efforts and investment in green technology and energy conservation is quite palpable. You could find a series of solar panels installed here, use of LED lights everywhere to save power, and also the RO plants ensuring clean drinking water. These are laudable steps towards sustainable development. This entire architecture is speculated to reduce the operations cost by more than 40% and thus, justifies the huge investment.
Canon believes in providing best customer experience through its various services. With the help of this training facility, Canon aim to excel in this endeavour by imparting training to engineers, sales teams and channel partners. The training will help them to get a better understanding of products and further enhance the customer experience.