From Vacation To Vocation

Dwight Loeding has rebuilt Orlando Regional Healthcare System's in-plant into an efficient, service-oriented success.

When most people go to Florida on vacation they come home with a tan. Dwight Loeding came home with a new job.

In 1990 he and his wife were enjoying the Florida sunshine on vacation from their home in Michigan when they noticed an ad in the Orlando Sentinel. The Orlando Regional Healthcare System needed someone to overhaul its faltering in-plant.

Armed with some high school printing experience and a business administration degree, Loeding decided to check it out. Clad in his vacation shorts, he interviewed for the position.

"They actually offered me the job before I left Florida," he recalls.

As a result, Dwight Loeding has spent the past nine years overseeing Printing Services for the Orlando Regional Healthcare System, steering it through many major changes and expanding it from an ineffective two-person operation to an efficient 10-employee in-plant with a full chargeback system.

When he came on board in May of 1990, Loeding says the in-plant had only two copiers and a small A.B.Dick press, "but they didn't have anybody to run it." The employees, he says, "really weren't customer oriented at all."

He discovered other inefficiencies, as well.

"I found out we had a forms vendor that we were spending close to $2 million a year with," he says. In addition, jobs were being sent out to many scattered commercial printers, with few records kept of which printer did which job.

"Part of my sales pitch was 'let's get some consistency in here,' " he says.

First he went after the two-color brochures and other jobs that could be done in-house on a just-in-time basis. He managed to acquire a two-color press and hire a skilled operator.

Then he combined the forms for all divisions of the company, bringing the total number of forms down from almost 6,000 to under 2,000.

Getting new equipment took perseverance. Loeding met with management three times before finally getting support to build a better shop. The in-plant now runs two Ryobi 3200s with T-heads, a two-color Ryobi 3302, a one-color 28˝ MAN Roland press, and several Xerox machines, including a DocuTech, a 5100, a 5065 and a Regal 5790 color copier.

Customer Service Is Key

Over the years, Loeding was slowly able to add employees as he built up the in-plant. He employs two customer service people, supporting his belief that this is one of the key areas for in-plants to emphasize.

"I don't believe you ever can have enough contact with your customers," he says. "If they have a problem, I want them to give me a ring."

To improve the image of the shop, Loeding brought in uniforms for his employees: red golf jerseys with the company's logo on them along with the words "Printing Services."

"It really helped our image," he says. Customers now see the in-plant as a team, working together to get their jobs printed.

One of the biggest changes that Loeding implemented was the move to a full chargeback system, which he introduced in October 1990.

"At first there was a lot of opposition," he recalls. But in the end, it saved the company lots of money.

Loeding has not kept his ideas within his company, either. He shares them with other in-plants in his role as vice president of the East Central Florida Chapter of the International Publishing Management Association.

Living in central Florida has been a big change for this rural Michigan native. Loeding grew up on a farm in Cass City, Mich., where he gained his mechanical abilities. In high school he applied for a job at the Cass City Chronicle. The owner eventually let him run the folding equipment and the single-color Solna press.

His entry into Great Lakes College, however, seemed to spell the end of Loeding's printing career. Earning a business administration degree, he spent two years selling real estate before taking that fateful Florida vacation.

Now, even though he misses the "change in the seasons," Loeding has no intention of moving back north. He has every intention, however, of continuing to improve his in-plant. Bob Neubauer