Indiana Shop Gears 
Up For Big Move

Even though Indiana University Document Services will be moving to a new facility at the end of the Spring semester, the 25-employee in-plant had no reservations about bringing in new bindery equipment in the final months at its current location.

Some of the latest additions to the Bloomington, Ind., shop are designed to handle new work or replace aging equipment. The in-plant's new Duplo DC-445 creaser, however, was brought in partly out of necessity.

"For creasing jobs, we previously used tri-creasers on our Stahl folder," explains Neil Hugentober, assistant director for operations. "But when a bindery operator took early retirement, it left fewer employees to deal with the setup."

Also, the bulk of the work for the college in-plant has transitioned to shorter runs. "It didn't make a lot of sense to set up the folder to run just 250 sheets," Hugentober notes. "We were looking for a better option for quick turnaround jobs."

Short-run print jobs are produced on Konica Minolta 6500 and 6501 digital presses. The Duplo DC-445 creaser is now used for "anything that we need to crease before folding," Hugentober points out.

"A lot of times a job would have a small spine and we would have to run it twice on the Stahl because we couldn't get it within tolerance," he adds. "But with the Duplo, it is just one pass through."

Other new additions to Indiana University Document Services include a Heidelberg Polar 66 cutter, an Oki CX3641 digital envelope press and a six-station Bell + Howell envelope inserter. The Polar cutter replaces an older Polar cutter that had been in service for 25 years.

"We wanted a smaller footprint and more automated features," Hugentober explains.

The Bell + Howell inserter is used in the in-plant's addressing area. The shop is now handling W2 forms for the university and needed a way to speed up production. Employees previously hand-stuffed envelopes.

"We hope to reduce some of our labor costs in that area," Hugentober reports.

The in-plant's offset operators are being trained to use the OkiData CX3641 digital envelope press, which was selected for its quality and reliability.

Employees will have a few more months to get used to this new equipment before it all gets packed up for the big move.

"After we get done with our commencement printings in the spring, we should be able to move in late May," Hugentober concludes.

The in-plant handles approximately 8,000 separate jobs every year—from quick print to long run—totaling more than 100 million pages.

“We are a service organization rather than an auxiliary unit. We’re self-supporting,” remarks Joe Goss, director of Printing Services, who has served the university for more than 23 years.