Digital Minilab Frontier 500

According to Ken Kojima, who participated in the development of the Frontier 500, “The development concepts of this new system were reducing floor space requirements, lowering costs, and maintaining high quality.” The Frontier series was first introduced in 1995, and, since then, we have made many additions to the lineup. The Frontier 500 is especially appealing to photo shops where space is limited.
The Frontier 500 is intended to be the embodiment of all the experience gained from the delivery of 35,000 digital minilab Frontier units throughout the world, and marketers from overseas and Japan participated in consideration of the detailed specifications from early on in the development process. Our goal was to introduce a product that met market needs quickly. To reduce the development time, which had been three years for previous units, related departments pooled their know-how and we formed a joint evaluation team from these sections. Yuji Nakashima, who was responsible for product evaluation and market introduction, recalls, “Before a test unit was available, we used a digital mock-up and made evaluations of the product in parallel with design and development. This made it possible to commercialize the unit in only one year.”

Development of the Frontier 500 also led to evolution in many areas related to concern for the environment. The number of parts was reduced about 44% from the number going into the Frontier 340, and it was designed to conserve energy. Also, through cooperation with external vendors, we were able to meet the requirements of the RoHS directive. Moreover, through the introduction of Fujifilm's original “W Plate Method” water cleansing and processing technology, the volume of effluent was reduced 15%.
In the case of the Frontier units, most CO₂ emissions over the product life cycle are released when the unit is in operation. Efforts to create a more compact unit and reduce energy consumption produced results and resulted in emissions about 30% lower for Frontier 500 than for current models. Kanenori Ochiai, one of the developers of the model, notes, “Going forward, we want to develop and introduce models that will have an impact on the market, both in terms of product performance and environmental performance.”