BYU Streamlines

One of the largest university in-plants, the BYU Print & Mail Production Center is reorganizing to make itself more efficient and customer friendly.

By Bob Neubauer

When Brigham Young University merged its print and mail operations in 1998 to form the Print & Mail Production Center, it improved communication between the departments and enhanced its workflow.

Now Doug Maxwell wants to take that merger even farther. The new director and his team are reorganizing and streamlining the 65-employee in-plant so that printing, copying and mail functions are completely integrated, not independent services with separate staffs, reporting structures and scheduling.

"We felt that we had too many inefficiencies in the organization," admits Maxwell, who took over as director last July when West Barton retired. "We were trying to maintain equipment, personnel and systems for three organizations. We had a lot of redundancy...that was very costly."

To eliminate that redundancy, the mailing, printing and copying areas in the operation's Provo, Utah, plant have been moved into one production area that reports to the production manager. In this way the in-plant now manages one pool of part-time student workers, rather than each part of the operation hiring and managing separate staffs. As a result, these student workers—about 200, working three shifts—can be cross-trained and quickly shifted to whichever area is busiest.

"We better utilize the students that we have," Maxwell says.

But this reorganization benefits the in-plant in other ways too, he notes. Now, rather than generating variable data files twice—once to personalize print jobs and again in the mailing area to print the addresses—the in-plant processes this data only once for both purposes. This increases efficiency and helps maintain list integrity, Maxwell notes.

BYU's reorganization has also improved customer relations, Maxwell says. This is a big concern of his, since he spent 13 of his 17 years at BYU working as a customer consultant for the in-plant, advancing to supervisor of that department before being named director of the Print & Mail Production Center.

"Our customers were getting somewhat of a runaround when they would call and check on the progress of their work because we would make them call each area of either copy, print or mail to check their status," Maxwell says. "We want our customers to feel that working with us is so easy that they would never want to take their work anywhere else. We want to streamline our organization to be as efficient as we can possibly be."

Improving Mail Flow

One of the tools that is helping the in-plant bring about that efficiency is its Pitney Bowes seven-station FlowMaster inserter. Customized for BYU, the inserter has three cameras and an ink-jet head.

When jobs are being printed, a bar code is added to each piece to tell the inserting equipment which pages to gather for each mailing. That bar code also ensures that the inserter's ink-jet printer prints the matching address on the envelope. This setup allows not only personalized printing but personalized inserting for each mailing.

"We're cautiously optimistic that the FlowMaster will actually increase our mail volumes," says Thom Roylance, assistant director. "Our alumni and fund-raising areas are looking for ways to increase the response to their direct mail marketing campaigns."

The FlowMaster will allow the in-plant to do more customized mailings, he says, hopefully bringing increased response rates.

Another advantage provided by the FlowMaster system is that, by letting the bar code link the printed piece with its corresponding address, the in-plant can avoid using window envelopes, thus providing better security for mailings and a more personalized look.

"We see the trend going to a closed-face envelope," Maxwell says.

The shop also uses a separate Videojet ink-jet printer with an inline tabber for addressing magazines, brochures, postcards and other items.

These changes at BYU are taking place against a backdrop of decreasing print and mail volumes, Maxwell acknowledges.

"We see traditional printing kind of leveling off," he says. Many of the monthly budget reports, class schedules, student packets, grade reports and catalogs of yesteryear have long since moved to the Web.

This has cut into mail volume as well, though the in-plant still handles just under one million pieces of incoming and outgoing mail a month. Postage expenses average between $175,000 and $225,000 a month.

Roylance says that BYU's copy centers will see impressions (though not revenue) decrease by 25 percent in 2005 as people increasingly send work to their desktop printers. Already BYU is down to nine copy centers from 11 a few years ago.

This decrease in work volumes, combined with technology changes, has led to a drop in staff levels too. The in-plant now has four fewer positions than it had a year ago.

"When we lose someone to retirement, we seriously look at not replacing that person," Roylance notes.

Even so, BYU remains one of the country's largest in-plants. Ranking eighth on the IPG Top 50, it reports an annual budget of $12.7 million. The quality of its printing has earned it a number of In-Print awards over the years, and even a Best of Show in 1995. Preliminary results from In-Print 2005 show that BYU won seven awards, more than any other in-plant this year.

To enhance its offset capabilities, the in-plant added a five-color, 40˝ Heidelberg with a coater and two perfecting units about a year ago. This joined a two-color, 40˝ Heidelberg perfector and a six-color, 32˝ Akiyama with a coater. On the digital side, the shop uses a Xerox DocuColor 6060 and three DocuTechs, one with a Roll Systems DocuSheeter roll paper feeder.

"With the roll-fed paper system on one of our DocuTechs, we're able to print more jobs two-up and four-up, reducing the number of clicks but still bringing in the revenue," Roylance notes.

The in-plant prints everything from stationery and newsletters to long-run magazines and hard bound books. Four-color jobs make up about 60 percent of its revenue, Maxwell says.

Another big component of the in-plant's sales is BYU's independent study program, one of largest in the country. The in-plant prints course materials on demand. Students can order materials in the morning and they will be printed and mailed the same day. This requires a tight integration between print and mail.

Roylance says the in-plant processes 400 to 500 individual packets a day, though this can jump to 1,500.

"During peak times we work 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. to fill orders and to print course packs for the start of school," he says.

Online Storefront

Maxwell and his team are in the process of updating the in-plant's online ordering system to allow more types of work to be submitted from clients' desktops. Currently the online system is limited to stationery orders. The in-plant plans to buy Jaws PDF-creation software and then build an interface to allow Web submission of jobs.

"The system will cost the job, bill for the job and convert the file to a PDF format," Maxwell says. "It will immediately soft proof their work for sign-off and then send the file to one of our print queues. We will print the job and, in many cases, deliver the work back to the customer in a few hours."

Maxwell hopes that if customers can send jobs right from their desktops, they will stop using their desktop printers for some of this work.

Working With the Church

The new five-color press, as well as some winter down time, have given the in-plant the opportunity to insource work from its close partner, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, headquartered just a few miles away in Salt Lake City. Though the church has a massive in-plant of its own, it has plenty of work to share, Maxwell says, and BYU has many student employees available to do hand work.

The in-plant's relationship with the Church of Jesus Christ of LDS goes far beyond its insourcing partnership, though. Established in 1875, BYU is sponsored by the church and maintains an educational atmosphere consistent with its ideals and principles. About 95 percent of the in-plant's employees are church members, Maxwell says.

Regardless of their faith, BYU employees are expected to live

according to certain moral and ethical standards, Maxwell notes. The bishop in each employee's district is asked to ascertain for BYU whether employees are doing so. Because

employees keep such high moral standards, Maxwell says, the in-plant has almost no brushes with theft, alcohol abuse or other problems.

For LDS church members, working for BYU has another advantage: it gives them a chance to feel as though they are serving their church.

"You feel like you're part of something more than just gaining money," Maxwell says.