A Tale of Two In-plants
University of Kansas may have closed one in-plant, but it relocated and expanded another, to the delight of its customers.
By Bob Neubauer
TWO THINGS happened at the University of Kansas last year: The school closed the in-plant on its main campus in Lawrence, and it moved and expanded the in-plant at the University of Kansas Medical Center an hour away in Kansas City.
Why would a university close one shop and expand another? Matt Doughty thinks he knows the answer: Service.
Doughty, director of Publishing and Postal Services at KU's Medical Center, feels his 20-employee operation collaborates so closely with its customers, and has such a deep understanding of their needs, that his campus would have a hard time getting by without his in-plant.
"I think the loss of that convenience on this campus would have had more ramifications than it did on the Lawrence campus," he says.
Plus, he adds, it didn't hurt that his operation was financially sound. Though he's reluctant to criticize his counterparts in Lawrence, he notes, diplomatically, that both campuses have different environments.
"The business model for KU Printing didn't work any longer for the Lawrence campus," he says, "while our business model still works very well for our campus environment, and hence the decision to build a new facility that allowed us to grow with the campus."
Handling everything from design and photography to four-color printing right on through to mail, KU Medical Center Printing Services has a loyal base of customers that sticks with it, despite ready access to quick printers in the Kansas City area.
"Our customer satisfaction ratings are just phenomenal," says Doughty, noting that he tracks this through surveys sent out with each finished job.
His customers appreciate the personal attention the in-plant gives them, something they don't get from outside printers.
"When you deal with my designers, there is no counter," Doughty says. "You pull up a chair next to them in their offices, and both of you discuss what you are trying to achieve."
The in-plant draws its customers from the university's School of Medicine, School of Nursing and School of Allied Health, as well as from the University of Kansas Hospital, also located on campus. The campus is in growth mode, Doughty says, with a new heart hospital and a biomedical research building in the works. This expansion both justified the need for the in-plant and forced it off campus.
The Decision to Move
Back in 2004, the university decided Printing Services' campus quarters could be better used for academic purposes. Officials could have simply eliminated the shop, as they would later do in Lawrence. Instead, they listened to the in-plant's customers and found an off-campus location that was roughly two-and-a-half times as large.
In September, the in-plant completed its move to the former General Stores warehouse. Doughty couldn't be more thrilled with the outcome.
"We were able to design our own space," he says. As a result, the new in-plant is laid out so that work flows from one department to the next in a logical fashion. What's more, bindery and mail are in the same area as printing for the first time. The new facility has dock access, allowing more just-in-time inventory management, as well as convenient paper storage.
"All my paper stocks are right here, all my bindery is right here," Doughty enthuses. "In the prior operation, we had paper storage down below the main print shop, our bindery was a few doors away, and mail was a few doors away after that."
The department retained a service center on campus where customers can drop off print and mail jobs and talk to customer service representatives. This is also where the graphic design and photography departments are based and where customers can stop in to get X-rays scanned or have posters printed on a Hewlett-Packard ink-jet printer.
Equipment Upgrades
Much has changed in the in-plant, Doughty says, since his first days there more than six years ago.
"When I arrived, everything was about ready to die," he recalls.
Since then, Printing Services purchased a used four-color, 29˝ Heidelberg GTO from Pittsburg State University and added A.B.Dick computer-to-plate equipment. The in-plant also runs digital printers from Canon and Savin, and a Riso duplicator for carbonless forms. (See equipment list.)
To get jobs into the shop, the in-plant built a front-end ordering system using PeopleSoft software. Though customers currently need the PeopleSoft client installed on their computers to be able to send jobs this way, the whole process will be moved to the Web in the spring, increasing customer access.
A Digital Future
Doughty sees a digital future for his in-plant and plans to eventually add a digital color press. The shop even left room on its production floor for it.
"It's a short-run, built-to-order world, and we need to retool for that," he says. "The business is content driven, not production driven any more."
He hopes to pay for the digital press through labor savings and additional work.
Among the products the in-plant currently produces for the KU Medical Center are course guides, exams, prescription pads, and four-color work like newsletters, patient instructional booklets and fund-raising materials. The university recently changed its logo, which means a whole lot of business card work is about to come the in-plant's way.
The closing of KU Printing has not brought Doughty's operation any new work, as the main campus has opted to contract with Kinko's for its copy work and with a commercial printer for offset jobs. Doughty confides that he has heard hints of discontent from customers at KU about this new print procurement system, since the outside vendors know virtually nothing about the inner workings of the university.
"Because we're on the campus, we understand the culture," he points out. "We understand the workflow and the relationships between the hospital and the university and all the other affiliated groups."
The university culture is dynamic, he says.
"To be able to work effectively in that environment you have to be immersed in it," he notes.
For instance, his in-plant, unlike outside printers, understands how its customers are going to be using the printed products they order.
"Many of our researchers and clinicians present their work at other scholarly forums and want the best possible appearance when presenting their data," he says.
When they have taken this work to outside quick printers, he says, they have sometimes paid the price by getting lower-quality printing, with pixelized images.
"Our approach gives them the quality they want, the turnaround they need...and the convenience of walking down a flight of stairs or across a courtyard to reach us," he says.
The university also benefits from the in-plant's attention to confidentiality concerns.
"Our exams never leave the sight of the operator from the time they are received to the time they are delivered," he says. "Any makeready materials for the exam are shredded. If they need to be kept overnight they are in locked storage areas."
Quality and confidentiality aside, his operation's financial health certainly carried a lot of weight when the university was considering his in-plant's fate. But Doughty concedes that timing also played a part in his operation's survival.
"The decision the university made to bring us down here, because it was made before Lawrence's decision, I think was a lucky thing for us," he says. "But then again, if we weren't in the black, and if we weren't enamoring customers [with] what we do, it wouldn't have mattered either."
As for his operation's continued survival, Doughty acknowledges that it will depend on how well the in-plant can help the university meet its goals.
"The good in-plant manager in an academic setting understands that [the] department is not there for the business of printing," he says, "but to provide products and services that help meet the teaching, service and research mission of [the] campus."
