His Kind Of Town

Mike Compton has been in the printing industry for almost 30 years, and he's just warming up.

By MIKE LLEWELLYN

Mike Compton is Chicago born and raised, and he can't hide the affection he's got for his hometown.

"This is a great city," he says. "I love big cities like New York, but Chicago is beautiful."

So he's stuck around.

Printing first caught Compton's interest when he was still in high school. Mr. Reginald Wagner's shop class introduced him to the trade, and he began his career as a facsimile operator with Chicago's Southtown Economist press in his junior year.

Staying with the company while he attended Moraine Valley Community College, he was eventually promoted to production foreman. Southtown, which handles newspapers like Investor's Business Daily and the New York Times for the Midwest, was Compton's second home for 18 years.

"I just got tired of the seven-day, non-stop grind," he says. So he bade farwell to the Southtown and moved up to Minnesota for a relatively brief stint at a weekly newspaper.

Setting Up Shop

Then, seven years ago, he moved back to Chicago to run Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois' Printing Services, and the shop has never been the same.

"The big thing when I came to Blue Cross Blue Shield was that they were stuck in a rut, not developing any new technologies," says the electronics major. "Since I came on board we've put up our computer-to-plate system. Our first platesetter was a Mitsubishi DigiSetter, and we just picked up a Heidelberg this past December."

Over the past seven years, he's also gotten his hands on two small Didde web presses, two A.B.Dick 9810s, a Heidelberg two-color Quickmaster, a 17-1⁄2˝ Sakurai 258 E2 and two Halm Super Jet envelope presses. His shop uses the presses for the large amount of forms and benefit booklets the company requires.

Fighting The Firms

The most important lesson to learn when you're running a printing service, says Compton, is that "time is money."

"For instance, why run an 8-1⁄2x11˝ when I can be running 11x17˝?" he asks.

The in-plant's Avanti job tracking system made such issues more clear.

"We started being able to see trends in the shop. Bottle necking," he says. "There have been times when I realized that instead of doing two makereadies, I could do just one and gang the job."

Job tracking and cost cutting becomes essential given what Compton calls the greatest threat to his shop: Facilities management firms.

"The biggest worry that we face are the FMs, because they go to the VP level or higher. They don't go to my boss," he explains. "But I think that because we have such open communication with the upper management we'll be okay. [With job tracking], we can show them that we have the advantage."

Compton also feels his shop can beat the FMs from a service standpoint.

"We print between 34 and 35 million EOBs [explanations of benefits] a year. FMs don't want to do that. They just want to run a 6180 and do black and white," he says.

Running A Tight Ship

To keep his shop fit and healthy, Compton says he has to leap two major management hurdles: Staffing and marketing.

"Because I've got a union shop, I can't offer financial incentives or time off," he says. "But to keep the staff motivated, you've just got to listen to them. When we set a record, we have a pizza party or I buy them lunch. Sometimes we hold barbecues. I just try to understand where they're coming from."

He adds that maintaining a productive atmosphere is also essential.

"I stay on top of the cleaning folks in the company to make sure that the shop is maintained. I try to give them a nice place to work," he says.

To market his shop, Compton believes face-to-face interaction is the best way to keep a shop in the minds of customers.

"We do a lot of customer contact. People know us. We're not physically in the main office," he says, "so whenever I go there, I do the P.R. thing. I just pop in and say 'Hi, How are you?' "

Compton has also circulated a customer satisfaction survey.

"The results were pretty good," he says. "Well over 90 percent."

In-plant Manager, Globetrotter

For a man so in love with his hometown, Compton also finds time for quite a bit of travel with Patricia, his wife of 27 years. He recently returned from a Caribbean cruise.

"My son Mike works for Southwest Airlines, so we get all of our plane tickets for free," he says. "You can't beat that."

Compton and his wife also have two daughters, Sara and Nicole.

For Mike Compton, the secret to sticking around in the printing business is to never sit still.

"We're always looking for ways to add value," he says. "And we're always looking to add new services."

Right now, he is in the market for a four-color press, he says, and he's working out the marketing strategies that will carry him through the coming years.