A Look Inside Canon
The manufacturing plant is part of a 3,659,730-square-foot campus that employs 8,594 workers in Suzhou, a city of more than 4 million, laced with picturesque canals and famous for its classical gardens. Chairman and CEO Kazunori Katayama explained that nearly all of the parts for the imageRUNNERs are manufactured on site (drums and toners excluded). He pointed out the large injection molding machines used to create plastic molded parts for the machines, such as paper trays and the machines' exteriors. Making the parts in-house, he said, assures tighter quality control and saves money, since Canon avoids paying transportation costs for delivery of parts.
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.
