From Uncertainty to Innovation: In-plant Rebounds After Strategic Investments
After the pandemic, John Heiser was a bit concerned about his in-plant’s future.
“I was definitely a little worried after COVID, because the workload had dropped so much, and we were wondering how much it was going to come back,” says Heiser, director of Creative Services for Hudson Valley Community College in Rensselaer County, New York. “It was a question of, did [the in-plant] really need to be as big as it was before?”
However, this in-plant wasn’t going to go down without a fight. Instead, it made investments in high-quality digital printing, automated finishing solutions, and signage production capabilities to better keep up with the college’s post-pandemic demands.
Now, the six-person operation is equipped with two Canon imagePRESS V800 digital color presses, an HP DesignJet Z9 42″ color printer, a Roland VersaStudio GS2-24 vinyl cutter, and more.
From left: Camille O'Leary, Adam Jones, and Scott Austin stand with Hudson Valley Community College's Canon imagePRESS V800.
Heiser explains that prior to the Canon V800s, the in-plant always kept a black-and-white and a color copier in-house, but as the need for color increased and demand for monochrome printing dropped, it was time to make a change.
“We were at the point where really needed more redundancy with our color, and if you only have one color copier that goes down, you're kind of dead in the water,” Heiser notes. “And also, click rates for black-and-white on the color units have been certainly going down over the last five years or so, to where it's pretty close to comparable [to what] you would get on the black-and-white unit. So, this is more cost effective, and it gave us more duplicity of services.”
Inside Hudson Valley Community College's in-plant.
Heiser admits that over the winter there were some growing pains with the V800s. Keeping the color calibrated was a challenge. But now the in-plant is in a good place with the machines and has even added a GBC coil punch to one of them.
“We were able to add spiral binding back into our offerings,” Heiser says. “We bought an offline spiral inserter, but that made it very cost effective. The biggest thing with coiling and comb binding is the labor. You know, if you're having to hand punch all that stuff, forget about it. So that was big in savings for us, and kind of enabled us to shift away from tape binding, which was our main offering for the past 15 years or so.”
Offset for Long Runs
The in-plant still has one offset press, a four-color Ryobi 3404X-DI, though it took a hiatus in May of 2024 when its operator had an injury. But as of April, the press is back up and running.
“We just started using it again. One of our biggest jobs of the year is our graduation booklet, and it always prints on there,” Heiser says. “So, we got it fired up for that, and our operator is in good enough health now where he can run it again, and that went pretty smoothly. And we hope to keep it running in certain instances.”
Inside Hudson Valley Community College's in-plant.
Heiser explains that for jobs like graduation materials, where the press runs 10 sheets of 5,000 front and back, it’s more cost effective to utilize offset.
“If we tried to put all that on the copiers in one month. It's going to really blow our budget out of proportion for that month. So, if we can keep that on the offset press, which is paid off, that's a big cost savings for us,” Heiser says.
However, Heiser ultimately foresees offset being phased out at the college in the next two to five years, and he shares that there has been a steady decline in offset work for the in-plant ever since the pandemic.
“It’s an older press, so there's just a lot of workarounds to make it work,” he says, adding that most legacy DI presses over 10 years old are not compliant with current network protocols, which can create institutional network security issues. “A lot of my people who have been here for many years don't always completely understand it. I just suspect, once I leave, I don't know if there's going to be anybody that's really going to pick that up, and the machine is old enough where they may just say, ‘I think we're done with this.’”
Wide-format Filling The Gaps
Although Hieser mentions that offset work has steadily declined for him and his team, he says that wide-format printing has helped fill some of the gaps created by COVID.
In fact, thanks to its HP and Roland devices, the in-plant was able to bring signage back in-house for the college. A $1 million redesign and replacement of all exterior campus signage was completed using external vendors, but ongoing updates to both interior and exterior signage will now be handled internally by the graphics department and print shop.
From left: Ethan Hayes, John Heiser, and Mary Beth Mullen show off Hudson Valley Community College's HP DesignJet Z9 42″ color printer and Roland VersaStudio GS2-24 vinyl cutter.
“It’s been a tremendous asset, because typically in the past, these sorts of projects would have to be sent to an outside vendor,” Heiser says. “Some of them, if they're more complex signs … those can take six weeks or more to turn around, and are a huge cost. We've got the capability now of being able to print things out and have them installed the next day or the same day, if really necessary. So, it's a big time savings and a cost savings as well.”
Hieser says the print shop has actually had wide-format capabilities since 2004, starting with a 24″ unit, then eventually working up to two 44″ printers and a large production table that allows the team to take on larger, more complex jobs.
In addition to signage for the school, Heiser also hints that he and his team are taking a stab at decals as well.
“We are hoping to get more into more decal work. We have been doing more with the cut vinyl, so we're doing cut vinyl lettering and so forth for certain events and things around campus,” he says.
Overall, it seems like Hieser’s post-COVID concern about jobs not coming back is a thing of the past.
“Surprisingly, some of the work has come back, and it’s enough to continue justifying what we do,” he says. “We've made some minor changes to our operation, such as cutting back on the press work, and making more work digital and short run, and getting equipment that's better suited for that, just adjusting to the college's needs.”
