Online Ordering: Latest Addition to New In-plant
Folsom Lake College knows the value of having an in-plant. That’s why the Sacramento-area school created a new in-plant a few years back and spent thousands of dollars stocking it with the latest equipment.
Now, fortified with Konica Minolta printers, a Heidelberg press and an assortment of bindery equipment, the two-employee in-plant has just unveiled its latest addition: an online job ordering system.
“People are definitely starting to use it,” remarks Kathy Barnes Liguori, manager of the two-employee shop. She has promoted it in e-mails to customers and hopes the system will make it easier for them to send jobs.
The system was created years ago by Don Reid, supervisor of Printing Services at American River College, along with programmer Ken Sorensen. American River and Folsom Lake are both part of the Los Rios Community College District. American River has since upgraded to EFI’s Digital StoreFront.
Ligouri says her school was so pleased with the idea of having its own in-plant that it had a facility built for the shop and budgeted for new equipment.
“When we moved in two years ago, we had a bucket of money, and we had 10 months to spend that bucket of money,” Ligouri says—with the understanding that no more money would come after that. She wrestled with whether or not to get a Xerox or Kodak digital press, but decided neither would fit in her facility. Also, she reasoned, the shop didn’t have the volume for a digital press yet. And once it did, a few years down the road, the technology in those machines would be obsolete.
“Whereas a printing press, 15 years from now, will still be perfectly fine,” she says. So the in-plant added a two-color Heidelberg QM46. Ligouri has run it only a half dozen times so far, but anticipates it will pay for itself in the long run.
