A New World

Stepping into The World Bank’s bright, spacious Printing & Multimedia Services operation on the outskirts of Washington, D.C., one is immediately struck by how much this in-plant has advanced from its days in the basement of the Bank’s downtown D.C. headquarters.

Gone are the low ceilings and tight spaces of the cramped city plant, along with the rumble of the old Harris web press. Instead, the phrase “state-of-the-art” comes to mind as one strolls past the video conference room in the new facility, where a morning production meeting is bringing staff from two locations together. Elsewhere, operators use a Skype video call to hash out job details with downtown customer service reps.

In the pressroom, large video screens on the walls display schedules of World Bank events, while the center of the vast room holds some of the most advanced digital printing technology in the industry: Kodak NexPresses, an Océ ColorStream 10000 and a Presstek 52 DI press. But the highlight of it all—and the most eye-catching, futuristic-looking piece of equipment in the room—is a brand new HP Inkjet T-230 production inkjet press, the first of its kind to make its way into an in-plant.

“Inkjet is really changing the traditional role of printing,” remarks Jimmy Vainstein, printing facility manager. “You no longer have to go with an offset press to get higher volumes and provide good quality and good service.”

Lightning-fast Turnaround

Providing good service to The World Bank is one of the main reasons the in-plant pursued an inkjet press. With duplex printing speeds of 400 feet per minute, the T-230 will enable the in-plant to provide much faster turnaround times on the books, publications, reports and other items with high page counts needed by the international financial institution. Jobs that would have taken eight hours to print on the in-plant’s toner equipment take just a half hour on the inkjet press.

“So when that difference is there, you can provide a great service for your clients [and] for the institution,” says Vainstein, his Venezuelan accent revealing his South American roots. He, like most of the in-plant’s staff, hails from outside the U.S., reflecting The World Bank’s global mission. (In fact, the in-plant boasts staff from 14 different countries.)

Customization, Color and Costs

In addition to speed, the inkjet press will also give internal departments more options to customize their books and reports for different audiences; to print these items on demand, so the content is fresh; and to include color on every page. Plus, the inkjet press will reduce printing costs.

“When you migrate from toner to inkjet, you get a cost reduction of about 30 percent, at least,” Vainstein maintains. He estimates that about a third of the in-plant’s toner volume will be migrated to the T-230. And because of the lower costs, the in-plant can bring work back in-house that had been going to outside printers.

“It basically allows us to compete,” he says.

“It’s a perfect fit for us,” adds Les Barker, senior information officer, during a recent tour of the facility. He points out the overhead pipes transporting ink from 200-liter containers on the other side of the pressroom into an ink distribution system near the press.

“So the press always has ink,” he remarks. In effect, other than loading paper rolls, there’s very little reason for the press to ever stop running.

All the Right Directions

With 32 staff employees, 65 contractors and $14 million charged back annually, Printing & Multimedia Services is an in-plant that’s moving in all the right directions: successfully using modern technology to help its scattered staff communicate, incorporating audiovisual services into its mix of offerings, and taking advantage of the opportunities presented by the latest digital and inkjet printing technologies. It’s all done in the name of helping The World Bank be successful in its mission of reducing global poverty.

“If we do our job well, then people can learn and share knowledge, which can affect all the people in the world that need our services for poverty reduction,” explains Manager David Leonard, who stepped into the role in 2011, when previous manager Jane Bloodworth retired. Prior to that, Leonard served as The World Bank’s senior project manager for Audiovisual Services for eight of his 10 years with the Bank. When he applied for his current job, he made an interesting proposal.

“I put forth the idea of changing the Printing, Graphics & Map Design Unit to be a multimedia services group and [provide] multi-channel delivery,” he says. “I knew that to be the way of the future.”

By packaging services like video production, live streaming and digital signage with printed items like brochures, programs, large-format displays and reports, “it can bring real consistency of product for our World Bank clients,” Leonard points out. Over the past two years, this vision has come to fruition, and the in-plant has helped various internal customers promote and produce their events using both AV and print services. Leonard recently hired a business development manager to spread the word around the Bank about these multi-channel delivery opportunities.

“I want to work towards not just being an à la carte service provider, but I want to try to move towards being more of a creative service agency for internal clients,” he says, “where we can really take their projects and what they want to communicate, and give it a consistent brand and look and continuity across all the delivery channels.”

The integration of AV services with printing came at a good time for the in-plant. In 2011, a Bank-wide space realignment project compelled the in-plant to seek out new quarters. Vainstein worried that his production staff would feel disconnected from the in-plant’s designers, photographers, cartographers and customer service representatives who remained downtown.

So when the new 23,400-square-foot facility in Landover, Md., was being renovated, it was outfitted with video conferencing capabilities to help the unit stay connected. At a recent morning production meeting, with high-definition screens showing staff at the D.C. facility, managers talked as easily as if they were sitting next to each other. It’s the same way when Vainstein meets virtually with staff in The World Bank’s Paris, France, print operation, he says. Likewise, Skype calls from the pressroom let operators and CSRs chat casually like coworkers, not strangers from two different units.

With AV services as part of the mix, along with cartography, photography, design, typesetting, CD/DVD burning, wide-format printing, print procurement, digital asset management and mail addressing, the in-plant has a variety of services to offer World Bank customers. The operation is also now offering e-books, though Leonard is unsure how far to go with this service. E-books do, after all, compete with printed books.

“I’m not sure how profitable it is,” he notes. “We’ve got to find the right mix.”

Though he acknowledges opportunities, such as leveraging rich media within an e-book—perhaps adding dynamic maps using animation—he still feels people value books more when they can hold them in their hand and feel the pages.

“I firmly believe if the economy starts to pick up, print is going to come back a little bit,” Leonard says.

Prepared for Print Growth

And the in-plant is certainly prepared for this. Its two Kodak NexPress digital color presses produce high-quality, short-run color jobs, often using special effects like Dimensional Printing to give text and images a raised or 3D effect. A NexGlosser provides a glossy finish.

For even higher quality, on items such as book covers or cultural guides, the in-plant relies on its Presstek 52DI, for volumes over 1,000. To proof these jobs, rather than having clients drive from the city, the in-plant has calibrated two Epson Stylus Pro 7900s, one in each location, allowing customers to see a physical proof. For most proofing, though, the in-plant encourages customers to look at a PDF proof.

For black-and-white work, the in-plant will rely on its Océ ColorStream 10000, outfitted with a full line of Standard Horizon cutting, stacking and folding equipment. Because it is also roll-fed, the shop can take jobs printed roll-to-roll on the HP T-230 and finish them on the Océ’s finishing equipment. But the inkjet press has a whole line of integrated finishing equipment of its own. It incorporates the Hunkeler POPP6 line of roll and sheetfed finishing equipment, as well as an inline Standard Horizon AFC-744 folder and PSX-56 signature stacker.

The Quest for Color

One reason the in-plant looked to an inkjet press was to provide more color publications for clients.

“People wanted to see more color on pages,” Vainstein observes.

In 2006, he says, color documents made up only 20 percent of the in-plant’s output; by 2012, color was up to 80 percent. The inkjet press will help them deliver that color.

The T-230 also supports The Wold Bank’s sustainability focus because it can print on any substrate, allowing the FSC-certified in-plant to use its supply of FSC papers from Appleton, Cascades, Finch, NewPage and Crown Van Gelder. (All of the shop’s papers are now FSC-certified, including cut sheet stock from Neenah.)

“The World Bank is trying to talk to countries about considering sustainability as they develop their economies, and so…if we talk the talk, we’ve got to walk the walk too,” remarks Leonard.

The T230 lays down a bonding agent—a colorless liquid applied before any other color at the precise locations where ink is to be printed. This allows inks to dry properly, even on papers not manufactured for inkjet printing.

As the in-plant tested out this new technology, operators learned some lessons, Vainstein says. Pages with heavy ink coverage on one side, for example, will curl. They will also take longer to dry.

“We need to work with our designers and our clients in order to get some of the jobs to be able to run efficiently on the inkjet press,” notes Vainstein.

As the in-plant moves forward, it will consider looking outside The World Bank for other clients serving similar international organizations, Leonard says, to keep the press busy.

“The HP gives us a lot of capacity,” he says.

But most of all, it is allowing the in-plant to transition itself from being a basic “document printer” to being a publications printer, Vainstein says.

“We are repositioning ourselves within the organization as a high-speed color printer and leaving behind all the black-and-white operational documents,” he declares.

And this, he feels, combined with the integration of audiovisual services, is the best way for Printing & Multimedia Services to help The World Bank fulfill its global mission.