Merging Technology and Craftsmanship

By uniting data center and in-plant printing services under one roof, organizations are discovering extreme workflow solutions.

By Maggie DeWitt

With today's emphasis on doing business better, faster and more cost-effectively, it was inevitable that management would see the wisdom of merging in-plant printing services with data centers.

For those who have not done so already, there is good news and bad news. The bad news is, with each day that goes by, your parent organization is squandering resources, losing operating efficiency and wasting money. The good news is, the task is not as daunting as you might think, and the two departments can, indeed, live happily ever after.

In this story, four managers discuss the reasons they merged with their data centers, what it took to make it all happen and how it has benefited production and profits. IPG spoke with:

Once Upon A Time

Five years ago, during the weekly meeting of the various department heads of the Valley View School District, the director of MIS spoke up. He mentioned how difficult it was for his staff to run the district's report cards on the antiquated impact printers—already slated for replacement—and then fold and stuff them for mailing.

Dan Strodtman listened closely. Then he made a suggestion: Send the files to his in-plant and utilize his printing and bindery equipment.

"From that meeting, more questions were asked and resolved, and finally, our variable data operation was implemented," he recalls. "The staff at MIS couldn't have been happier. They spent a lot of time working on projects out of their field and were anxious to get out of the printing business."

A few miles northeast, in the Chicago suburb of Northfield, the College of American Pathologists had a networked DocuTech in Printing Services to allow Manager John Baron to do some variable data work as a backup for data center printing.

"When the data center moved from a mainframe to a UNIX base, they also purchased a DocuTech," he says.

The College mails numerous reports to laboratories. Printing Services was producing a static document and the data center printed a section containing variable data. The two were then collated and packaged for distribution in Printing Services. The routing of paper was inefficient.

"Since both departments had a DocuTech, my boss and I starting making recommendations that printing should all be under one roof," Baron says. "When you have two different departments—each with their own agendas and priorities—working on the same project, timing isn't always the best. Initially, the data center was a bit reluctant to let go of their printing, but the vice president of Information Services (IS) decided that IS's core business was not printing."

One of the biggest changes, Baron admits, was learning the acronyms and understanding the language of the IS world.

The Victory Is In The Struggle

In Hennepin County, Minnesota, it was challenging enough for Theresa Schaffer's IT operations department to serve the printing needs of more than 11,000 employees. So, when IT's mainframe work was added—including more than 400,000 property tax forms, more than 300,000 "Truth in Taxation" forms, numerous court-related documents, accounts payable and receivables checks, mailing labels and a gazillion reports—it was truly a test of her managerial skills and a case of grace under pressure.

The merger added between 250,000 and 500,000 impressions a month to her department's output, and the volume is growing. However, as do Moschilli, Strodtman and Baron, she reports that the transition went more smoothly than expected.

The first step involved meeting with different user groups and deciding how to get their forms—including those that were oddball sizes and weights—and continuous roll labels used in high-volume mailings from the impact printers onto the cut sheet printers.

"One solution involved installing a Xerox VIPP [variable-data intelligent PostScript printware] program for forms and creating a letter coding system that indicates the type of paper to use and distribution information," explains Schaffer. "We also learned that we could save considerable time by purchasing pre-punched paper for reports."

She adds that it was an adjustment for those used to the convenient fanfold design of continuous-formatted reports to become acclimated to the loose paper design, but the three-ring binders she suggested did the trick.

"We were unable to remove one four-part NCR court document since each page of the NCR was different," Schaffer continues, "so we did have to purchase a small impact printer."

Schaffer also notes that her staff was used to taking one form and printing thousands of copies, and if some in the run were ruined it wasn't a catastrophe

"With variably imaged documents, however, if there is a problem [with one or two], we have to care," she notes.

Print Volume Increases

At Sun Life Financial, the average monthly volume increased by 2 million impressions as a result of the data center merger, putting the print shop at the 4.25 million impression mark.

"I think one of the most difficult aspects of the whole merger was on the systems side," notes Manager John Moschilli. "They had decided to use Solimar to convert all of the information to PostScript for the printers and develop a new print stream for every type of paper and output. It then had to be tested to ensure that there were no differences in side-by-side comparisons."

Once the Systems areas reviewed the output, every report had to be reviewed by the business areas for their sign-off.

"Now, when data gets to the printer, all we need to do is literally release the job, see which type of paper the machine indicates is to be loaded and start running," explains Moschilli. "It took time, but once it was developed, we never looked back."

Merging Printing Services and the data center added only a very small piece to Strodtman's overall print shop operation at Valley View School District, accounting for approximately two million of the 36 million impressions the shop produced last year.

"I don't think that our role within the district has changed," observes Strodtman. "However, it did add a whole new component to the print shop's operation with regard to handling variable data."

Variable Data Devotee

The first step involved designating an employee to serve as the point person for variable data work.

"Because there was a big learning curve for us, it was easier to have one key person work extensively with the programs for the variable data and come to grips with all of the little nuances. Otherwise, they are easy to forget," Strodtman cautions.

The next step was deciding upon Planet Press software to facilitate file sharing, as well as choosing the printers to output the data. The print shop purchased EFI's T/R Systems Micropress software and two Hitachi DDP 70 engines and began accepting files from MIS through a PCL RIP. MIS was able to eliminate printers on its end.

In addition to the report cards, Strodtman's shop also started

receiving electronic files

for schedule cards, progress reports and longer-run reports, as well as databases for other departments within the school district.

"In fact, we have recently invested in a more powerful and specific software program from Planet Press to address variable data needs," he adds, "and have increased production output by marrying the software with Canon IR products." The shop currently has six networked Canon IR machines.

Baron reports that prior to the merger three years ago, the work his shop did at the College of American Pathologists was mostly traditional offset printing, particularly booklets, using two-color presses and a copier. And, as in most traditional print shop settings, the staff worked from job tickets on a very set, deadline-oriented schedule. Such was not the case in the data center, so both sides needed to adjust.

"The vice presidents and the directors of both divisions conducted numerous meetings to discuss what needed to take place, how staff would be relocated and their job duties adjusted, where the manager from IS would be placed and production schedules," says Baron. "In addition, I spent a lot of time in the data center actually learning their work. I spent at least a good week sitting in there and understanding their workflow and responsibilities. There was software involved that we had never used, such as a queue manager, but learning this was actually something my operators and I did pick up on fairly quickly."

It took approximately six months to a year for everyone to find their stride, as output went from approximately one million impressions per month to 3 million plus.

"I'm almost turning into a data center as opposed to a traditional offset shop," muses Baron. "Still, the college just conducted a cost analysis for offset printing; we have to continue to prove our value every day. Since the merger, we have shown the ability to get the product out 10 days quicker than in the past for much more efficient turnaround times. The servers feed...our queue manager, so files just appear there so we don't have to go and release files from our data center. It is more of an automatic process."

Quality, Productivity Benefits

Product quality has improved as well, Baron says, and he is getting positive feedback from customers.

"Everyone now definitely sees the wisdom of the move," he says.

Strodtman also comments on the increased quality and turnaround time, benefits not to be overlooked when considering restructuring.

"The largest benefits aren't always in dollars," he says. "For example, our student report cards needed to project an image that wasn't obtainable with the equipment that the data center had. After all, the data center's efficiencies lie with information and data. Printing Services' is with ink and paper. That being said, there is still a significant financial savings to our district."

According to Moschilli, Sun Life Financial was able to cut costs by more than 40 percent.

"We had two 4635s in our data center that we were able to eliminate and we didn't need to add any new equipment in Print Services since we had capacity," he explains.

To ensure success, he notes that the company conducted very thorough testing.

"There were nights where we actually did a whole run of just test data, and let the production staff get acclimated to the change before we went live," stresses Moschilli. "Personally, I was very open to the change. The only things that I had to learn were the ins and outs of data center printing. I'm certainly not 'Mr. Network Guy' by any means, but, fortunately, I'm fairly technically oriented and can diagnosis situations and point people into the right direction."

Better Negotiating Power

Like Moschilli, Baron advises working closely with the data center for at least one week to fully understand what is involved and how files are managed and saved.

Baron also points out that, since the two departments are now under one budget, they enjoy better negotiating and purchasing power with the paper vendors.

"Also, our data center was running 24 hours per day, while we operated just one and one half shifts per day in Printing Services," he says. "Even with the data center volume I'm able to produce the work in two shifts, eliminating the need for a 24-hour operation."

Schaffer notes that her printers are less costly to run than the mainframe's printer.

"Removing the data center's [IBM] 3900 alone saved a couple of thousand dollars per month," she says.

"I believe that merging the data center with the print shop is a no brainier," offers Strodtman. "It should be every company's goal to become as efficient as possible. I would imagine that the biggest resistance would come from people who are threatened by anything new. If there is a resistance from the data center, the print shop manager needs to explain that it benefits the company to have each entity doing what it does best. Since the merge, both the data center and the print shop are focused on their essence for existing."