Plenty of In-plant Events at PRINT 13

In-plant managers who attended PRINT 13 in Chicago this week may have had a difficult time getting to the show floor with all of the in-plant events taking place. The second day of the show in particular featured a full schedule of sessions and roundtables dedicated to in-house printers.

The first in-plant event that day was a panel discussion featuring four managers: Abbas Badani, of Penn State; Tom Rohrbach, of Progressive Insurance; Mike Lincoln, with the State of Colorado; and Garry Boytos, of the University of Texas Health Science Center. They took turns detailing their success stories, as well as initiatives that did not go as planned.

That session had barely wrapped up when IPG Editor Bob Neubauer welcomed 60 in-plant managers to IPG’s lunch event, sponsored by Rochester Software Associates. After a short presentation by Neubauer in which he showed examples of value-added services in-plants are adding, Tawsha Bone-Worrall, of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, described UPMC’s path to in-plant printing, including the tools used to gain insight, monitor print spending and maximize efficiency.

Then, later that afternoon, Xerox hosted about 80 managers for a third conclave, featuring Jim Hamilton, of InfoTrends, and Bob Tapella, President of GreensheetBIZ and former U.S. Public Printer. They were later joined by Dave Peterson, of Ingersoll Rand, who discussed how his company started its in-plant in 2007 to provide on-demand printing of product literature.

The next day, more than 100 people, mostly in-plant managers, packed the In-Plant Printing and Mailing Association's lunch-time session. InfoTrends’ Charlie Corr, who moderated the event, addressed some of the issues facing in-plants and encouraged them to look for new services to add to stay relevant, such as video and data analytics.

Then John Sarantakos, administrator of University of Oklahoma Printing and Mailing Services, shared some best practices. He reminded managers to occasionally get out of the trenches, look at the big picture and plan for the future. Talk to your senior employees about their retirement plans, he advised, so you're not caught off guard, and make sure you train new people to fill in.

And for those "micro-managers" in the room, Sarantakos had an inspiring message: "People hate you," he revealed, to much amusement. So stop doing it, he said, and let people do their jobs without interference.

Another speaker, Mike Lincoln, who manages the state of Colorado's Integrated Document Services (IDS) operation, relayed how merging print and mail a few years ago brought a 30 percent efficiency increase. He said he insists on top quality from his in-plant, which he admits has not traditionally been a focus in government.