Best Buy Retail Leaders, Printing Pros

By anticipating the needs of its company, Best Buy's Print Solutions Group has become one of the top in-plants in the retail business.

By Mike Llewellyn

BEST BUY Corp., based in Eden Prairie, Minn., opens between 50 and 70 new stores every year, according to Rick Neumann, director of printing for the company's Print Solutions Group (PSG). With each grand opening representing $35,000 in new print and fulfillment business each year, on top of the corporate and insourcing work PSG already provides, it's little wonder the 110-employee in-plant ranked 15th on IPG's Top 50 list.

In fact, PSG's process group is charged with staying on top of those new stores, anticipating what printed products store management will require. Neumann says that department is just one example of the way PSG attempts to conform the way it does business to the specific needs of a big-time retail operation like Best Buy. The result is an in-plant with an annual operating budget topping $14 million.

PSG has come a long way since its founding in 1991. PSG Director Rick Fiebiger was there at the start, and he says that when the facility first began handling print orders, the shop had just two A.B.Dick presses and a Challenge cutter. PSG now takes up a total of 90,000 square feet with its printing and fulfillment divisions.

Fiebiger says the company's plan for PSG was to have a print sourcing department to handle print buying for the entire company—whether that meant printing in-house or outsourcing.

"We're a little different than most in-plants," he says. "We looked at the industry and saw in-plants competing [with commercial printers] for work."

So instead of building an in-plant that has to struggle with outside competition to survive, Fiebiger explains, PSG, as a print sourcing department, handles the responsibilities of being a print buyer as well as a print provider.

The Importance Of Being Experts

To excel in this dual capacity, Neumann, director of printing, believes PSG's primary responsibility is to be a source of print expertise for Best Buy. It's a "core competency," he says, that differentiates this in-plant from others in its field.

"Different from a lot of in-plants, we don't rely on ourselves [for print] entirely," he remarks.

In other words, Neumann explains, jobs are separated into those the in-plant will always be able to do (like store signage) and work that is better suited to one of the in-plant's many "partner" shops that are happy recipients of outsourced work.

"So it's our responsibility to decide what we outsource and what gets printed on-site," says Neumann.

This is where being a print expert is important. PSG has to stay constantly informed of market prices for a variety of printed product so it can be sure Best Buy is getting the best price and quality possible.

"We know print pricing, and that can help save [Best Buy] a lot of money," he says.

PSG's lifeblood is the trust its parent company has invested in it, so the in-plant goes to great lengths to show that Best Buy is always getting a great deal.

"We audit ourselves every month. We take a test sampling. Usually it's about 11,000 jobs [annually]," explains Neumann. "We also continually bid ourselves out with preferred vendors, not just to see if we're cheaper, but also to see what we're good at."

He says if PSG finds any job where it is not as cost-effective as a partner vendor, that job gets outsourced.

Additionally, Neumann says staying cost-effective means investing in quality equipment. For instance, when the in-plant acquired a six-color MAN Roland press a little over a year ago, the major motivation for the purchase was the P-COM front end and CIP prepress software that allows the operators to pre-makeready all jobs. Neumann says it was a wise move that has saved the in-plant a considerable amount of time.

"And we see the benefits of CIM [computer-integrated manufacturing] daily," he adds.

True Colors

But expertise doesn't stop at print, says Neumann. Like any retail operation, Best Buy's brand name and appearance are essential components of its success. So PSG touts itself as a "brand expert," as well. Neumann insists it's essential the in-plant gets the Best Buy colors just right.

"We want everything that goes into a store to have the same look. We're very careful with ink manufacturers, etc.," he explains, adding that Kohl & Madden is PSG's major offset ink supplier.

This attention to detail that Neumann says PSG applies to every job is also applied to what goes on inside the in-plant each day. This includes the area of staff morale.

"Best Buy in general is extremely committed to keeping morale up," he says.

Neumann reports that the company circulates a 12-question employee satisfaction survey twice a year. The survey generates a performance score that Best Buy attempts to improve every time.

"PSG is interested in keeping employees empowered," says Neumann. That means the in-plant tries to make sure its employees feel like they can take ownership of their work. To do that, every part of PSG is organized under a "group management" philosophy, giving every employee his or her say.

As a result, the in-plant was designated by the Printing Industries of America (PIA) as one of the country's top workplaces in 2002. Turnover at PSG is very low, Neumann adds.

"There's opportunity in this in-plant, and it's an attractive company," he says. "But basically, it's a nice, clean, fast-paced place with a lot of work."

Running At Full Capacity

"A lot of work" is an understatement. The 90,000-square-foot facility is currently operating at 96-percent capacity.

To get that volume into the in-plant, PSG relies predominantly on electronic file submission (see sidebar on next page). This is a life saver in an operation that takes in 25,000 individual jobs each year. As an added bonus, the shop reports house errors were at less than two percent for its $14 million in internal jobs.

To make sure customers think of PSG first whenever they need printing, the in-plant assigns an account specialist to each customer to act as an internal sales representative. Their role goes far beyond order taking though. They help customers solve communications problems that often go beyond a print solution.

"We've sourced solutions that might involve something on a beach ball or an inflatable display," explains Fiebiger.

This makes PSG more of a valued partner, and gets the in-plant involved earlier in the planning stage so potential problems can be avoided. (For more on how PSG stays close to its customers, see the story "Turn Off The Fear" on page 48.)

In addition to handling work for Best Buy, Neumann says the in-plant also finds time to take in jobs from outside the company.

"But insourcing is fairly sporadic because we're typically running at full capacity," he says.

And running at full capacity for PSG means the shop is turning out everything from books to dry-erase boards. The in-plant boasts an impressive array of offset and screen presses, including a two-color Sakurai, a two-color Heidelberg, a six-color MAN Roland and a four-color Didde web press, in addition to a six-color M&R UV screen press and a one-color M&R Patriot screen press.

Overall, Neumann, who has been with PSG for five years, says the in-plant will continue to find success because it remains so closely attuned to the needs of the company and can predict what the retail chain will need.

"We know the culture of the corporation," he says. "And we're always in touch."