Offset On-demand?

After being recognized as a top digital shop, Unisys revamped its offset operation to make it an on-demand model.

In 1995, the in-plant at Unisys was recognized as a leader in the digital realm when it was honored with the CAP Ventures Technology Innovators Award. After adding digital technology, the in-plant had reduced its 200,000-square-foot warehouse to an aisle of less than 10,000 square feet, while raising production and quality.

But what could the shop do in the offset area to cut costs and offer faster service?

"I said, 'Hey, we have to come up with a better way to do offset than the normal two-week cycle time, and the dependency of having a service bureau,' " recalls Gregg Gabbana, manager of print on demand operations for the Plymouth, Mich.-based software company. "Let's bring it all in-house."

So that is exactly what he did. The in-plant turned to A.B.Dick for much of the equipment in its offset department. Last year, Gabbana added two A.B.Dick 3500 two-color tower presses and a 9850 offset press with T-head. These additions helped raise production levels, but what has really made the difference, he explains, was the purchase of a DPM2000 digital platemaker.

"We were always outsourcing all of our plate work, using a local service bureau and we always went with metal plates," Gabbana explains. Polyester plates and film are now output from electronic files using the DPM2000. When film is made, the shop utilizes an A.B.Dick plate processor and a nuArc exposure system to produce metal plates. Poly plates are used for short-runs of four-color process work typical to the in-plant. Most jobs using polyester plates average from 250 to 2,000 impressions.

Having these capabilities in-house has proven to be effective. Gabbana says his customers are amazed at the quality of the work the poly plates produce. And the 26 employees at the shop are impressed by the ease of use of the DPM2000 and the speed of having plates done on-demand.

"We have been able to turn some jobs around in 24 hours—sometimes even the same day," Gabbana enthuses. "We get a job in the night before and have it out the next day. We'll have the polyester plates done in the morning, it will go to press, it will dry, be finished and out the door that night."

Self-sufficient Operation

The in-plant prints all of the technical documents for all of the software Unisys sells, as well as marketing materials and CD inserts. It makes all of the media internally, prints all of the documents, has full binding and finishing capabilities and ships the products to its customers. It has become a self-sufficient operation.

"That's something that we really pride ourselves on, the one-stop shopping," contends Gabbana, a 16-year veteran at Unisys. "We are not dependent on going to anybody else other than our own internal people."

Measuring 14,000 square feet, the Unisys in-plant produces more than 700,000 impressions per month. Gabbana adds that the shop cranks out over 125 million pages of black-and-white work each year. Last year, he proudly announces, CAP Ventures again recognized the shop—rating it number five in the nation among all print-on-demand sites based on volume and services offered.

Unisys also does a good bit of insourcing. The shop has taken in jobs from local Girl Scout chapters, the Plymouth Chamber of Commerce and local churches. Gabbana notes that doing these jobs improves the company's image in the community—but he always remembers that his internal customers come first.

"We have a three-legged stool. We call it cost, quality and on-time delivery," Gabbana reports. "We have to be cheaper, build a quality product equal to or better than our competition and deliver it to them quicker than the competition. That's the only way we are going to stay in business as an in-plant print shop."