Gospel Publishing House Makes Major Digital Investment

By Bob Neubauer

When the time came to move into digital printing, Gospel Publishing House went all out. The 255-employee in-plant for the Assemblies of God has invested thousands of dollars in new digital color and black-and-white printing and finishing equipment for its Springfield, Mo., facility.

“We just needed this additional niche to be more of a multi-purpose print operation,” explains Arlyn Pember, general manager.

The centerpiece of the installation is a new Kodak NexPress 2100 plus with a fifth color and a NexGlosser unit.

“The clients, they love the color,” comments Jon Harrell, account consultant manager. “They really like the gloss.”

Also new is a Kodak Digimaster EX138 and four pieces of Standard Horizon bindery equipment: a BQ 270i perfect binder, a used HT 70 three-knife trimmer, an AFC 544 AKT automated folder and a two-tower Speed Vac collator.

Adding bindery equipment to handle short-run work was crucial, says Harrell.

“You’ve got to think of the whole solution,” he says. “The NexPress doesn’t do it all. You’ve got to be able to finish that work.”

Adds Pember: “If you don’t have the equipment to finish it as rapidly as you print it, then you’ve got one arm tied behind your back.”

With an eight-unit Heidelberg web press, and two four-color Heidelberg and Miller sheetfed presses, the in-plant has always been strong on the offset side, but this is its first digital printing venture. One reason for this move is the decrease in run lengths for many of its traditional projects, such as the curriculum materials it produces for university correspondence courses.

“It just wasn’t affordable for us to do 500 of these types of books,” remarks Harrell.

The cost of printing and storing large quantities was mounting as well.

“Warehouse space is expensive,” notes Pember, who knows this well because his operation also handles order fulfillment for some 30,000 accounts. “So our goal is to do shorter print runs and turn inventory more frequently.”

At first, the shop sent these short runs to an outside printer, but after crunching the numbers, they realized it made more sense to buy the equipment. The NexPress was a natural choice, Pember says, because of the great local service the in-plant was already getting from Kodak.

“The service that you buy with the equipment often times is more important than the equipment itself,” he declares.

Pember reports that customers are excited about the NexPress. This was encouraged by an open house held by the in-plant. It drew 200 visitors—a fifth of the employees in the entire organization. Having seen what the NexPress can do, many customers are now preparing to take advantage of it, Pember says. Meanwhile, the IT area is doing the ground work to enable the eventual move into variable data printing. This will be invaluable for fundraising and marketing projects.

Though the NexPress is drawing some short-run work away from the offset presses, Pember is optimistic that customers will bring additional offset jobs to the shop along with their digital work.

“One complements the other,” he says.

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Bob Neubauer Author's page Bob has served as editor of In-plant Impressions since October of 1994. Prior to that he served for three years as managing editor of Printing Impressions, a commercial printing publication. Mr. Neubauer is very active in the U.S. in-plant industry. He attends all the major in-plant conferences and has visited more than 180 in-plant operations around the world. He has given presentations to numerous in-plant groups in the U.S., Canada and Australia, including the Association of College and University Printers and the In-plant Printing and Mailing Association. He also coordinates the annual In-Print contest, co-sponsored by IPMA and In-plant Impressions.