Major Upgrade at Girls and Boys Town
The Girls & Boys Town Print Shop recently received a cornucopia of graphic arts delights that would make even the largest commercial printer envious.
The seven-employee in-plant, located just outside of Omaha, took ownership of a two-color Heidelberg Quickmaster 46 press, a two-color Hamada H248CX press, a Mitsubishi DPX2 platesetter, a Xerox DocuColor 8000 and a Xerox 250.
"I've been here 11 years and that's the most equipment I got all at once," remarks Doug Larsen, manager.
The timing of the installations—which all happened within a two-month span this past spring—was really just chance, he says.
"Everything wore out all at once on the presses," he explains. "At the same time the leases ran out on the color printers."
The old presses had bad rollers and were really beyond repair, he contends.
"It's like a used car; you can only fix it up so much," he laughs. Before he could even brace for sticker shock, he stumbled upon a great deal.
"As luck would have it, Mutual of Omaha got rid of their two-color presses." He was able to snap them up at an affordable price.
At the same time, the in-plant was faced with replacing its 11-year-old imagesetter. The new Mitsubishi CTP unit has sped up the platemaking process wonderfully, Larsen says. Operators can do three or four times as much work.
"It's working a whole lot better than I ever would have guessed, so we'll probably pay it off faster than I thought," he says.
The shop was reminded recently how much better CTP has made life when the platesetter went down and the imagesetter was fired up once again.
"It was so slow everybody was complaining about how much time it took," Larsen says. "We're so spoiled in just a few months."
On the digital side, the in-plant added the DocuColor 8000 both for the quality of its printing and for its speed.
"We had a 6060 and that was barely keeping up" with demand, Larsen says. The marketing department is ordering increasingly more short runs (about 1,000) of brochures, post cards and newsletters, targeting distinct audiences, he says.
The Xerox 250, which has a stapler and a punch, is getting a workout printing and stapling handouts of PowerPoint presentations. The shop turns these projects around so quickly that word has spread and customers now prefer sending these small jobs to the in-plant rather than doing them on their own printers.
"The color that comes out of these machines is really remarkable," says Larsen of the 8000 and the 250.
He has noticed another positive effect that all this new equipment is having on his shop. It has sparked the enthusiasm of his staff.
"When they get [new equipment] like that they really react favorably and they get more work done," he observes.
Larsen notes that administration at Girls and Boys Town has been discussing a new logo for the organization. This will mean new business cards, letterhead, envelopes and more, he says.
"We're looking forward to being very busy the next six months, so the installation of this equipment has been timely," he says, adding, with a smile, "I know it looks like I was really smart, [but] it just happened."
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.
