Big Ten Printing and Copyright Conference

More than 75 college and university in-plant representatives met recently at Indiana University to discuss copyright issues, e-commerce, CTP and more.

by Bob Neubauer

College and university in-plant managers have learned one important lesson from their institutions: education is essential.

This message is so ingrained that the college and university sector of the in-plant industry holds not one, not two, but three educational conferences each year. In the spring, the Association of College and University Printers meets. Then in the fall, the Southeastern University Printing and Duplicating Managers Conference (see story, page 61) and the Big Ten Printing and Copyright Conference take place.

This year I attended the Big Ten conference, hosted by Indiana University. More than 75 university attendees and 21 vendors gathered in Bloomington, Ind., for the event, which came just weeks after a tornado ripped through the area. Collapsed buildings and uprooted trees lined the road to the conference center.

Though the Big Ten traditionally draws in-plant managers from northern universities, this year attendees came from as far away as Louisiana and California.

Joe Goss, director of IU Printing Services and Materials Management, organized an excellent program, which included a tour of Printing Services' impressive facility, as well as a walk through campus. One highlight of the visit was a trip to the library to see a copy of the Gutenberg Bible. Printed in the mid 1450s, it is one of only 48 surviving copies of the first major work printed with moveable type in Western Europe.

E-commerce Approaches

One of the opening sessions discussed e-commerce in the university in-plant market. Juniata College's CIO Ray Chambers moderated the session, which featured Eve Bohakel, from the University of Louisville, Chuck Tuttle, of Purdue University, and Rick Wise, from the University of Missouri.

Bohakel said "UofL" started offering a Web form for business card ordering as early as 1999. Many people find online ordering very convenient and expect even more items to be available online. But many more university departments are still not ready for Internet ordering, and prefer to bring jobs in person, often on paper. Some still have no Internet access, Bohakel said.

For jobs ordered online, the in-plant sends a hard copy proof, since many clients are reluctant to download Adobe Acrobat, precluding them from viewing PDF proofs.

At Purdue, all campus departments use a Web-based ordering system called Ariba to order from most vendors. Printing Services is among those vendors, so departments can place orders electronically, selecting typically ordered items from an online catalog.

Business cards are subcontracted out to a company called Business Cards Tomorrow (BCT) and ordered via its Web site, Tuttle said. When campus departments order business cards through Ariba, the in-plant cuts and pastes that digital information into the BCT site, which provides an instant PDF proof. This proof is shared with customers on request.

The University of Missouri introduced its online Web storefront in February, and more than 475 customers have since signed up, submitting more than 3,000 jobs. After logging in, customers choose a file to be printed from their hard drive. Using technology developed in part by T/R Systems, an automatic online proof is created as a PDF.

But the system is not completely automated, Wise says. Customers are told they will be contacted by the in-plant once it agrees to do the job. Also, no prices are provided online. Wise was concerned potential customers might use price information to shop around, or erroneously ask for prices on an offset job and be deterred when the job was priced as a digital toner job, at a higher cost.

"You cannot automate everything at this point in time," Wise said. "We still want a human being to talk to them." That way, once the in-plant has the file, operators can suggest how to print the job most cost effectively.

Doing More With Less

I moderated a panel that offered ideas on doing more with shrinking budgets and staffs. Speaking first was Kelly Woodward, of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She emphasized that understanding your true costs is essential to any in-plant. She showed the audience how to calculate a budgeted hourly rate.

Woodward suggested doing a painstaking analysis of how you spent your money last year, and then figuring out what is likely to change in the coming year. Also, look at where you made money last year and find a way to grow this.

Steve Goodman, of the University of Illinois at Springfield, eliminated work order forms by putting them online as PDFs for customers to download and print. Since he sells them paper, his department ends up making money when customers print the forms.

Goodman also increased employee participation in decisions.

"By giving everybody a say in what goes on in the shop, our productivity has increased," he said.

After four years of budget cuts at the University of Oklahoma, John Sarantakos said he has become adept at saving money. Printing Services takes in work from other universities and from the state government. The in-plant also took control of supplying paper to the campus and makes money there. Plus, Sarantakos oversees the campus copier program.

He said new technology, like an imagesetter or platesetter, can help an in-plant do more work with fewer people. He reduced overtime in the in-plant by subcontracting the work that was creating the overtime.

"There's a lot of fat in every one of our organizations," he said. It's up to the manager to get rid of it.

Copyright Concerns

The conference included several sessions covering copyright issues. At one, Rosemary Chase, copyright officer for George Mason University, and Beth Cate, associate university counsel at Indiana University, led a lively audience discussion. The main issue of concern was campus quick copy shops printing course packs without obtaining copyright permission from publishers. Professors in some cases are supporting this illegal practice by taking materials to these copy shops instead of the in-plant.

Audience members discussed the pros and cons of turning in such professors and copy shops by sending the infringing course packs to the Copyright Clearance Center.

Managers expressed frustration that publishers are punishing the compliers by raising their prices for granting duplication rights to make up for the revenue lost from the non-compliers. If fees were more reasonable, participants said, the publishers would get more compliance and more money.

CTP Strategies

In-plants are gradually moving from film-based workflows into direct-to-plate technologies. Three university in-plants that have successfully implemented CTP offered their observations in a Big Ten panel.

Jeff Dible, of Ohio State University, talked about his shop's Fuji Sabre imagesetter.

"Our pressmen love it," he said. "When you go direct to plate...the registration is dead on."

Plates cost more, he conceded, but film cost is eliminated and proofs are less expensive.

At Michigan State University, the in-plant started with polyester plate CTP in 2000 by purchasing a Heidelberg Quicksetter, and then added a Heidelberg Topsetter 74 for metal plates earlier this year. The secret, said Matt Stehouwer, is to establish a well-defined, standardized process workflow. The in-plant drastically reduced the number of sheet sizes it worked with to streamline production.

Also important, Stehouwer said, is making sure operators buy into the process. MSU bought additional training for its operators to ensure they knew the technology well.

At the University of Delaware, Rodney Brown reported great success with his in-plant's Fuji Dart platesetter. It has saved his school more than $26,000 in consumable costs per year, he said. He was also able to eliminate one position in the shop, saving another $41,000.

The first step, Brown said, was to get guarantees of new work from customers before getting the platesetter. Then get ready to take on more volume.

"We can put more work through the shop in a shorter period of time," he said.