LA In-plant Makes a Change for the Greener

AS COMPANIES and organizations catch “the green wave” and start looking for ways to improve their sustainability, they rely heavily on the initiatives of their individual departments. In-plants can play a major part in the overall green success of their organizations. One in-plant that’s leading the way is the Reprographics department at the Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE), the nation’s largest regional education agency. Thanks to an equipment upgrade, the shop’s Océ digital printers now reportedly discharge up to 90 percent less ground-level ozone, consume up to 45 percent less energy and emit a much lower operating noise level than ever before. By using high-definition toner, which requires a lower fusing temperature, the eight-employee in-plant has reduced its heat energy output by 50 percent, putting less strain on its HVAC system. These environmentally conscious changes, along with the shop’s robust recycling program, have made it a shining example at LACOE.

“We have realized we can do our part as a unit that affects all others,” says Kristen Kenton, supervisor of Reprographics.

Those “others” include the more than 80 school districts overseen by LACOE along with 1.7 million public school students and their teachers. To serve all of LACOE’s programs, departments and staff, Reprographics produces everything from stationery to educational booklets and coil-bound books. It also turns out informational brochures, newsletters and all manner of official board reports and other communications for internal and external use.

The Back Story

Long before sustainability came into vogue, Reprographics was a fairly typical in-plant, says Kenton.

“Ten years ago, Reprographics ran two full shifts with 21 employees, running 80 percent of the work on offset presses,” she says. “At that time, LACOE stocked a very large supply of NCR forms in its warehouse. Reprographics printed and packaged those forms on a regular basis.”

Five years ago, Reprographics ran two overlapping shifts with 16 employees. Five press operators ran the four presses, which produced 70 percent of the work. Three employees operated the color and monochrome printers, and five bindery workers bound and packaged printed materials.

“During this time, we were forced to send much of our color copy and larger publications to outside commercial printers in order to meet our increasing demands,” Kenton says. “It was apparent that we needed to replace our equipment with technology that would allow us to keep the work in-house.”

A New Era of Productivity

Last summer, following an intensive competitive bidding process, Reprographics awarded a contract to Océ. It installed:

• An Océ VarioPrint 6200: a 200-page-per-minute (ppm) cut-sheet black-and-white production printer.
• A VarioPrint 2110: a 106-ppm black-and-white printer.
• An Océ CS650 Pro: a 65-ppm production color machine.

Since the Océ equipment was installed, Reprographics has not sent any digital printing to outside vendors. The shop no longer stocks new forms and is in the process of eliminating most of the remaining inventory of existing forms.

Using the new Océ equipment, the in-plant has moved 80 percent of its work from press to digital. This allowed the shop to utilize employees in other areas. For example, one press operator was reassigned to the front office due to her expertise in customer service. The integrated inline bindery features on the Océ machines have reduced the need for additional bindery personnel and equipment, allowing the shop to eliminate two bindery positions due to retirement.

And Sustainability to Boot

Though the bid specs were written with production time, quality and cost savings in mind, Kenton says, “We were also thrilled about the benefits of Océ’s product from a sustainability standpoint.” Those benefits, she reports, have been substantial.

“We’ve seen some dramatic differences between the Océ equipment versus the equipment we used to have,” she says. “No more black walls from toner dust, less yelling over the noise of the machines. We are now able to work with customers at the workstations by the equipment, and there are no more ‘ozone’ smells.”

The flagship of the fleet, the Océ VarioPrint 6200, uses Océ Gemini Instant Duplex technology. It delivers several environmental benefits including self-developing toner, which means less mess or toner residue on documents, and energy-saving low-temperature fusing.

The VP6200 reportedly emits up to 90 percent less ground-level ozone emissions—the primary constituent of smog—than other comparable production-class equipment. This is consistently below the threshold of human detection.

Because of the VarioPrint’s twin-engine digital duplex systems, which print both sides of the page simultaneously, in a single pass, an estimated 45 percent less energy is used than conventional dual-pass systems. Lower energy consumption results in lower heat emissions, which significantly lowers facility cooling and air conditioning requirements, further reducing Reprographics’ carbon footprint.

At 78 dB, reportedly the lowest operating noise level in the industry, the VP6200 falls well below the maximum sound allowable without hearing protection in an eight-hour period, according to the OSHA Hearing Conservation Program. As a comparison, the previously installed Canon IR110 (of which there were two, side-by-side) were rated at 85 dB each—right at the legal limit for required hearing protection.

Senior Reprographics Technician Dave Marx praises the “uptime factor” of the VP6200. In the first seven months, the in-plant did not have a paper jam within the print engine, and pre-engine paper jams are few and far between. Jam-free operation, as any operator knows, has a huge impact on the emotional health and well-being of the entire shop (remember, emotions are contagious).

To support the VarioPrint 6200, LACOE also installed a VarioPrint 2110. Between the two, the in-plant was able to replace and exceed the productivity of four older Canon machines: two IR110s and two IR8500s.

“Work doesn’t stack up anymore, and our inbox no longer overflows,” enthuses Kenton.

A booklet maker was installed on the 6200 and a fusion punch was put on the 2110. As a result, production is not held up for either finishing function.

“Many jobs come off bound and ready for delivery, and there is no more hand-marrying of subsets,” Kenton remarks.

Environmentally Friendly Color

For digital color printing, the 65-ppm Océ CS650 Pro replaced an older Canon CLC5000. The CS650 has an integrated Océ workflow and inline booklet making and subset stapling.

As with all Océ equipment, the CS650 is Energy Star and RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) compliant. In addition, the toner is manufactured with an environmentally friendly process that emits approximately 40 percent less carbon dioxide (CO2), sulfur oxides (SOx) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) than conventional toner manufacturing processes. The high-definition toner uses no fuser oil and boasts a lower fusing temperature, leading to a reduction of total heat energy by 50 percent compared to conventional methods.

Though the older Canon equipment produced about 8,000 impressions a month, volume has skyrocketed on the CS650 to an average of 80,000 impressions per month. This is because color jobs that were previously outsourced can now be done in-house.

Jobs are submitted in a variety of ways: EDU Business Solutions/Print Shop Pro for order entry, delivery and billing; EDU Business Solutions WEBdesk from EDU for online order entry; and Océ’s DocWorks PRISMAaccess and PRISMAprepare for production.

Approximately 35 percent of all orders are received online using EDU Business Solutions WEBdesk. For all Océ equipment, document preparation and management is handled by Océ’s PRISMAaccess and PRISMAprepare. Both software packages work hand-in-hand to seamlessly integrate the department’s document creation, production, archival and retrieval needs.

“Now with the Océ workflow software, we have the ability to program jobs using a visually friendly GUI for ease of document preparation,” says Kenton. This makes for a seamless and integrated workflow for all of Reprographics’ output devices. Other features include automated job submission, acceptance, and preparation, through to production, finishing, archiving and distribution.

PRISMAprepare further enhances the department’s workflow, allowing staff to collect PDF pages from digital and paper sources and clean minor imperfections, assign media attributes, define tabs and tab captions, create inserts, add blank pages and more. Booklet creation, imposition, color split-and-merge and adding of trim marks are all accomplished in native PDF format.

Overall, Kenton is very pleased with the Océ equipment, which has allowed Reprographics to reduce the number of presses it uses from four to two.

“We have less waste due to little or no jams, misprints and poor quality...and we no longer experience minor cuts and bruises caused from clearing jams or minor repairs,” says Kenton.

Although LACOE itself has no firm sustainability mandates at this time, Kenton says customers are interested in environmental responsibility.

“We are experiencing an increase in requests from our clients for environmentally conscious products and production methods,” she says.

As time progresses, the in-plant’s intention is to continuously improve and formalize its programs and efforts, and to continue to do its part to aid the Office of Education as a whole toward a more sustainable future.