A Week of In-plant Visits

This was a busy week for me, filled with in-plant visits and conversations with managers. After spending Monday mingling with managers at the In-Print contest judging, I returned home Tuesday, and left again Wednesday morning for a drive across Pennsylvania. Just south of Altoona, I paid a visit to a brand new in-plant. Sheetz, a convenience store chain based nearby, just opened a 35,000-sq.-ft. facility to print all the signage and product labels for its 710+ stores (one of which I stopped into for lunch).

Sheetz employees get trained on one of the in-plant’s new Kongsberg automated cutters.

I met with Lauren Gearhart, print operations manager, who proudly showed me around the new facility. With high ceilings and plenty of open space for expansion, the in-plant boasts some of the latest digital printing and finishing equipment and a spacious warehouse for storing substrates and finished products.

Operators cut labels on Sheetz' new Grafotronic DCL2-350 laser cutter.

Most of its 17 employees were already working for Sheetz in other roles and received training to run the equipment. Because the in-plant is a member of the PRINTING United Alliance, it took great advantage of Alliance iLearning courses to educate its team.

The impressive array of equipment includes devices not commonly seen at in-plants, such as a Durst P5 350 D4 super wide-format printer and two Kongsberg automated cutters to produce store signage. For product labels it uses a Durst Tau RSC-E printer and a Grafotronic DCL2-350 laser cutter. To handle smaller signage, brochures, and other smaller-format printing, the shop has a Ricoh Pro C9500 and a C7500 with a fifth color unit.

The new Ricoh Pro C9500 and Ricoh Pro C7500 with a fifth color unit inside Sheetz’ new 35,000-sq.-ft. printing facility.

Sheetz opened the new in-plant so it would have more autonomy and control over its printing, Lauren told me, which will allow the company to make better decisions based on business priorities.

“We have a very strong growth plan,” she said of the company. Having its own in-plant will allow Sheetz to be more flexible and not have to wait for external vendors to keep pace. Stay tuned for a more extensive story on this new in-plant in the days ahead.

The new Durst P5 350 D4 super wide-format printer at Sheetz.

From there I headed back east, stopping first at Shippensburg University for a look at its smaller but very well equipped in-plant.

IPI Editor Bob Neubauer with Shippensburg University Manager Joe Amsler.

Manager Joe Amsler showed me around his two-person shop, which recently expanded its capabilities by adding an HP Latex 365 printer, an HP latex 64 plus cutter, a 64” GFP laminator, and related equipment. (See our recent story.) This has given the shop a lot of new business printing banners, yard signs, stickers and more. Banner stands are getting popular, Joe said, and he sells them to customers so they can reuse them by printing new banners for different events.

The new wide-format printer and cutter.

Joe and I talked about the need for in-plants to look for new work like this, as traditional document printing decreases. His shop still uses its ABDick two-color press for programs, but much of the printing is done on a pair of Canon digital printers. He prints diplomas with the digital presses and uses a foil stamper to add the university seal. These used to cost $5 each on the outside, he said; they cost him about a nickel each now, a big cost savings.

The in-plant has quite a variety of equipment, most of it from an earlier, busier time. Because of the age of the machinery, Joe said, it’s getting harder to find parts for some of the bindery gear.

IPI Editor Bob Neubauer with Irene O’Neill, Graphic Services supervisor at Central Dauphin School District.

I left Shippensburg and headed to Harrisburg, where I stopped by the Central Dauphin School District to meet with Irene O’Neill, Graphic Services supervisor. Her busy three-person in-plant runs five Konica Minolta and pumps out 2 million monochrome impressions a month of curriculum materials, tests, student planners and more for the district’s 12,000 students.

The five Konica Minolta AccurioPress 6120 black-and-white printers fit snugly into the production area.

Irene, who also does much of the district’s graphic design, loves the shop’s MarketDirect web storefront, which lets teachers easily order classroom materials. Though the shop has no wide-format inkjet printers, it prints posters on its Kyocera TASKalfa 7054ci color printer, as well as business cards, postcards, and theater programs.

Space is tight in the in-plant, so the bindery equipment is located in a corner of the adjoining warehouse. Because the district is relocating the offices in its administration building, the in-plant will be moving after the end of the school year, so she’s hoping to get a larger facility for the in-plant.

I could have headed right home after these three visits. But as I passed Hershey Park, I remembered that Penn State Health’s in-plant was just down the road, so I popped in unannounced to say hi to Craig Seybert, manager of Printing Services. We chatted a few minutes about his equipment upgrade plans, which include upgrading the shop’s Canon varioPRINT iX-series sheetfed inkjet press to a faster model. I’ll definitely be following up to learn more, and you can count on reading about it in In-plant Impressions.