Doing Everything Right

Not only does Eastman Chemical Creative Services have sophisticated prepress and printing operations, it handles photography, video, streaming media, CDs—and it even insources.

As the largest employer in Tennessee (with 10,000 on its payroll), Eastman Chemical has a large presence in the state, says Mike Thomas, manager of Eastman Chemical Creative Services.

That presence is especially felt in eastern Tennessee, where the company's Kingsport facility is located.

And it is in eastern Tennessee that this sophisticated in-plant is capitalizing on its parental relationship. By promoting its graphic arts capabilities externally, Creative Services is taking full advantage of Eastman Chemical's manufacturing fame.

"The company has a reputation, and we feed off that," admits Thomas, noting that under the Eastman banner, Creative Services has increased its commercial printing/insourcing business 42 percent since last year. In fact, insourcing now accounts for nearly a third of the in-plant's total business, with sales of about $1.5 million a year.

While profitable, insourcing carries a weighty responsibility, Thomas cautions: "We use the company name, which means our integrity and quality have to reflect the business practices, products and standards of Eastman Chemical," he says. "We don't want to negatively reflect on the company."

Strong Selling Points

In operation for more than 50 years, Creative Services had already established a good reputation within the company when it began to look for outside customers five years ago. The in-plant had two strong selling points: the company's reputation and decades of four-color offset experience. In 1999, under the guidance of former manager Larry Sutherland, insourcing really started picking up steam and became a main focus of the in-plant operation.

With its arsenal of equipment—including a computer-to-plate system that was installed in February 2000—Creative Services found it had a knack (and a passion!) for commercial printing.

"The key advantage is the wide variety of services we're able to provide," notes Thomas. These include:

• Six-color offset printing

• Flexo label printing

• High-volume color and black-and-white copying

• Wide-format poster production

• High-end studio photography

• In-house design

• Full-service video/audio production

"We're a one-stop shop," Thomas continues. "We handle customers' needs from creative development to finished product; from streaming media and making promotional CDs to our high-end studio photography. We do it all. And, that's what makes us unique. Very few in-plants can do all that."

Few in-plants are able; they don't have the cutting-edge technology, which is the backbone of the 60-employee Creative Services operation, Thomas contends. With a $3.4 million budget, Creative Services has an arsenal of equipment that reads like a "wish list" for most in-plants. The centerpiece of its digital prepress department is a Rampage Systems RIP with a CreoScitex Spectrum Trendsetter 3230 platesetter.

"We've achieved our objective with this system," Thomas declares. "We've improved quality, increased production and lowered costs. We've also decreased our prepress staff and significantly improved the accuracy of our proofs."

Advanced Capabilities

Printing is done on a 29˝, six-color Heidelberg Speedmaster, a two-color Komori, and a six-color flexo press, as well as several other smaller presses, including two letterpress units. Creative Services also offers a range of bindery services.

High-volume, high-speed copies are produced on networked black-and-white and color copiers (Heidelberg 9110s and Canon C2000 and C1150 machines, respectively). Thomas reports that the in-plant's central copy service produces about 1.4 million black-and-white copies and 80,000 color copies each month.

A showpiece of Creative Services is its video production studio.

"We have a complete video production facility, which includes a studio for multi-camera shoots, a sound booth, edit suites, a satellite down-link and a video duplication area," explains Thomas. He notes that Creative Services is currently "taking full advantage" of live streaming video (globally) over the company's intranet, as well as providing streaming video for the company's Web site (www.eastman.com).

In addition to streaming video and other media, another sought-after service the in-plant offers is creating promotional CDs. Hundreds of pages of information can be customized and put on a CD, which is used for laptop presentations by the Eastman Chemical sales reps.

"It looks like a Web site," Thomas explains. "We're going to incorporate that capability into the company Web site."

Digital Media Library

Creative Services also produces and manages an extensive digital media library, which provides on-demand resources for communications and distant learning, Thomas says.

"Digital video and audio files enable us to provide information and training at almost any workstation within the company," he says. "We have converted our photographic studio to digital and have aggressively pursued outside sales in this area. We are currently installing a Noritsu 2901 digital photographic printer to create photographic business cards for the company straight from digital files.

"We're also installing a Ritzo photographic mini lab, which will let us go from digital files to printed photographic sheet—a capability that will help us create high-quality photo business cards. We hope this will give us a marketing advantage with outside sales."

A new market that Creative Services has started to explore is limited-edition photographic printing. Due to its high-end quality reproduction capabilities, the in-plant recently took on two such jobs. For one, an artist wanted 1,000 prints made of a ceramic piece the artist had created. A Creative Services photographer shot the artwork and converted it to a print.

Thomas expects insourcing will grow because of Creative Services' digital photography capabilities. The employee store, which offers film developing via the in-plant, will also add to insourcing growth. Insourcing creates a cash flow, Thomas points out, and that defers costs to the company.

The in-plant recently produced a promotional brochure about its services, as well as a six-minute video, entitled "Eastman Chemical Company: Making You Look Good."

According to Thomas, Eastman Chemical recognizes Creative Services' strategic importance to the overall operation of the company.

"Eastman Chemical continues to see the strategic value of Creative Services by supporting it with capital," he says.

This capital is used for purchasing new technology—technology that "reduces cost and increases productivity, while improving quality," Thomas says. "Technology that increases the number of services we're able to offer."

The more services the in-plant offers, the more profitable it will become, and the more strategically valuable it will be to the company.

Without hiring any new staff, or any outside talent, Creative Services has "realigned itself," Thomas states. He credits his people with rising to the occasion, in spite of being moved around and placed in different jobs.

"There's a real can-do attitude here," he says. "We have a lot of good people who step up and show leadership. That's part of the reason for our success."

Another reason—perhaps the most important one, Thomas proposes—is its close association with its parent, Eastman Chemical. The company was founded in the late 1920s, and by the 1950s, it was in need of various printing services, which Thomas claims couldn't be found on the outside (in the Kingsport area) at the time. Thus, Eastman Chemical set up its own shop and provided those services internally.

"The organization has grown up around us," Thomas notes. "We're not an add-on. We're an integral part of our parent organization."

-by CHERYL A. ADAMS

Find Out More

Mike Thomas: mathomas@eastman.com