PRINT 13: In-plants in the Limelight

PRINT 13 was a busy show, but perhaps no group of printers had a busier time there than in-plant managers. Between the luncheons, sessions, receptions and other forums designed specifically for in-plants, managers were challenged to find time for the show floor itself.

Not that anyone in the in-plant community is complaining. After all, managers could pick and choose which events to attend, and very few went to everything. Just witnessing the warm embrace of in-plants by the printing community was a heartening experience.

"The high presence of in-plant activities were a great improvement compared to previous years," remarked Jimmy Vainstein, printing facility manager at The World Bank. "These events truly provided many opportunities to network with fellow in-plant managers and help each other find solutions to everyday challenges."

In-plant managers were a big part of the educational program at PRINT 13, and a number of them led seminars on topics like adding value, generating revenue and variable data printing. One seminar featured a panel of four managers who took turns sharing ideas and describing successful initiatives. They were:

• Abbas Badani, of Penn State University;
• Tom Rohrbach, of Progressive Insurance;
• Mike Lincoln, with the State of Colorado's Integrated Document Services (IDS) operation;
• Garry Boytos, of the University of Texas Health Science Center.

(Watch videos from this session here.) Badani, who runs a $15 million, 50-employee operation, said his in-plant now prints a 50/50 split of offset/digital work. His guiding philosophy has been to make the customer happy, so they want to use the in-plant. He has found that partnering with procurement and nurturing that relationship has helped the in-plant's success.
Rohrbach said his in-plant earned the right of first refusal by taking ownership of the company's brand, which is extremely important to Progressive. "If you do that, you are literally a strategic partner," he said. He encouraged managers to keep up with the latest technologies so the in-plant can offer customers solutions they hadn't even thought of.

Lincoln said that a focus on quality has has taken his in-plant far. Over the years, he changed the employee mindset from "it's good enough for government," to one that focuses on the best possible quality. "Our customers started noticing," he said. Now they are strong advocates. Lincoln also ramped up customer service and now has a four-person team that focuses on each agency's needs to figure out how the in-plant can satisfy them.

Boytos also thinks of his in-plant as a solutions provider, using creative solutions to help customers. He focuses on winning over dissatisfied customers with excellent service because he knows customer loyalty is the key to an in-plant's survival. Boytos also talked about his profitable wide-format printing operation, which generates $14,000/month in billing—revenue that helps fund new equipment. "Large-format printing is a gold mine," he said.

In-plant Luncheon

That session had barely wrapped up when IPG Editor Bob Neubauer welcomed 60 in-plant managers to IPG's in-plant luncheon, sponsored by Rochester Software Associates. After a short presentation by Neubauer in which he showed examples of value-added services in-plants are adding, Tawsha Bone-Worrall, of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, described UPMC's path to in-plant printing.

To improve her operation, she and her staff did a careful analysis of the printing being sent to outside printers. They gathered data on how much was being outsourced, by which departments, the type of printing and which companies were printing it. Then they looked at their capabilities to determine which of those jobs they could do, what investments they would need to make to take on more of that work, and how they could get better and increase efficiency.

The in-plant worked out a plan to improve efficiencies through its RSA WebCRD Web-to-print platform, implement new features in the platform to support new external printing, obtain the first right of refusal to monitor all jobs through WebCRD, and add capabilities, capacity and staff to support additional work.

The presentations were followed by an interactive discussion by managers in the audience about Web-to-print, inkjet and other technologies they had seen at the show.

Ask the Experts Panel

Later that afternoon, Xerox hosted about 80 in-plant managers for the day's third conclave, featuring Jim Hamilton, of InfoTrends, and Bob Tapella, President of GreensheetBIZ and former U.S. Public Printer, who encouraged in-plants to focus on customer service, exactly like commercial printers do.

"It you're not helping a customer meet their needs, why should they come to you?" Tapella questioned.

They were later joined by Dave Peterson, manager of campus services and office facilities with Ingersoll Rand, who discussed how his company started its in-plant in 2007 to provide on-demand printing of product literature.

IPMA Lunch Meeting

The next day, more than 100 people, mostly in-plant managers, packed a room for a luncheon hosted by the In-Plant Printing and Mailing Association. Fortified by an ample buffet, they listened as moderator Charlie Corr, of InfoTrends, addressed some of the issues facing in-plants and encouraged them to look for new services to add to stay relevant, such as video and data analytics.

Then John Sarantakos, administrator of Printing, Mailing and Document Services at the University of Oklahoma, shared some best practices. He reminded managers to occasionally get out of the trenches, look at the big picture and plan for the future. Talk to your senior employees about their retirement plans, he advised, so you're not caught off guard, and make sure you train new people to fill in.

And for those "micro-managers" in the room, Sarantakos had an inspiring message: "People hate you," he revealed, to much amusement. So stop doing it, he said, and let people do their jobs without interference.

After a presentation by Konica Minolta's Jeffrey Collins on color integration, Lincoln, with the State of Colorado, relayed how merging print and mail a few years ago brought a 30 percent efficiency increase. He said he insists on top quality from his in-plant, which he admits has not traditionally been a focus in government.

Having attended all of the in-plant events detailed in this story, Lincoln was impressed.

"As always, the peer-to-peer interaction provided invaluable data," he remarked. "The free trade of information and ideas always seems to provide new opportunities and new perspectives on our ever-changing industry."