An All-Inkjet In-plant

Last week, IPG editor Bob Neubauer paid a visit to the Riso Communications Center, the in-plant used by Riso to print the company's marketing materials. Unlike at most in-plants, every piece of printing equipment in the shop is an inkjet printer.

Neubauer was invited to give a presentation about in-plants to Riso managers during the company's internal sales meeting using the data in IPG's "In-plant Trends and Services" report, which Riso sponsored. After that, he traveled to the company's Woburn, Mass., facility to talk with Nestor Grullon, Production Print Specialist at the RCC. He has a selection of Riso ComColor inkjet devices at his disposal, including the not-yet-released Riso T2, a cut-sheet inkjet duplexing device that can print up to 300 duplexed prints per minute.

Most of the material the in-plant prints is marketing related, going out to customers and supporting dealers and the sales force. This includes direct mail, post cards, brochures, perfect bound books, and all of the company's billing. The shop prints between 250,000 and half a million impressions a month. Customers can also use the in-plant's printers to run test files and see what their materials will look like printed with inkjet.

Riso is pretty happy with its in-plant, and acknowledges that it has saved the company a lot of money and given it control over its messaging. It was nice to see Riso practicing what it preaches: that inkjet brings the cost of color printing way down, to below color toner levels. This opens an opportunity for educators and businesses to add color to their documents for very little additional cost. Color can be used to highlight important information and helps keep readers engaged while improving information retention.