IPMA Road Show in Virginia Brings a Crowd

Attendees tour Liberty University’s in-plant during the second IPMA Road Show. In the foreground is Bob Boyer, senior director of Fulfillment, Postal Services, Print Shop and Warehousing.

Following up on its successful Road Show event on Feb. 7 in Los Angeles, the In-plant Printing and Mailing Association held its second Road Show event of the year last week in Lynchburg, Va., at Liberty University. About 20 in-plant managers attended the meeting, plus several vendor representatives — in all more than 25 attendees from Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C.

Bob Boyer, assistant VP for Fulfillment, Postal Services, Print Services and Warehousing at Liberty University, welcomed attendees to his operation, along with Dwayne Magee, IPMA president.

The in-plant, which started up just two years ago, includes an HP Indigo 7800 digital color press, an HP Scitex FB500 wide-format printer and a full bindery stocked with Standard Horizon equipment. Attendees got to see it all on a tour.

IPMA President Dwayne Magee greeted attendees of the Road Show.

IPMA created its Road Shows to introduce non-member in-plants to the association, while providing educational and networking opportunities to in-plants that may not be able to travel to the national conference. The day is typically filled with educational sessions featuring speakers who understand the in-plant environment.

At Liberty University, speakers talked about creative wide-format applications, Web-to-print and color management. Pat Groeger of Rochester Software Associates discussed the benefits of Web-to-print software and streamlining workflow. Mike White and Greg Falkenstein of Prisco led a great discussion on wide-format printing and provided visuals of creative applications that can be produced — bus wraps, banners, printing on glass, doors, etc. Attendees were able to speak about different applications they have used at their companies.

Debbie Pavletich, principal consultant for Ricoh, previewed a white paper that Ricoh and IPMA sponsored on cost-saving opportunities provided by in-plants. She offered examples of seven in-plants that have brought cost savings and value to their parent organizations. This was a sneak peek at the paper's findings which will be presented at IPMA's conference, June 11-14, in Pittsburgh.

Michelle Mogilski, Ricoh's marketing manager, then continued the discussion on other ways to streamline workflow with Web-to-print and use technology to reach a targeted market. The education portion of the meeting was capped off with John Thorburn, senior color anaylst at Canon, speaking on controlling color in digital production environments.