Back from the Brink

HERE’S A nightmare that no manager wants to face: Being hired to run an in-plant only to have your boss decide to outsource the whole shebang six months later.
After being hired in August 1996 as manager of Printing Services for BlueCross BlueShield (BCBS) of South Carolina, John Fabian awoke to find his dream job turning scary.
“They hired me because the former manager was retiring,” he says, “Work had been slow to get to the customer, and I had a digital background in addition to offset know­ledge and tried to tell them that the thing of the future was computer-to-plate.”
Before Fabian could bring the in-plant into the present, much less the future, six employees were let go, and four Heidelberg presses were sold off in a print room purge.
“The in-plant closed in April 1997, and aside from myself, four other employees were retained to process the outsourcing of all work,” says Fabian. Two employees—one with more than 20 years of print experience—served as print buyers, sending bid requests to dozens of vendors in three states.
The remaining two employees worked two shifts on a lone analog Xerox DocuTech, which had survived the purge only because it had recently been leased.
“As the work came in, we saw what we could do in-house and did it,” says Fabian, who oversaw both pairs of workers.