Progressive’s Insourcing Journey

Progressive was sending millions of dollars of print work to outside printers each year. Its 119-employee in-plant wanted to find out whether insourcing this work would save the Cleveland-based company money and provide faster turnaround times. So the operation undertook a thorough, analytical seven-step process to determine the optimal balance of internal and external production.

At Graph Expo, Tom Rohrbach, IT systems engineer consultant at Progressive, shared that process with a roomful of fellow in-plant managers during a special luncheon hosted by IPG and sponsored by Rochester Software Associates. A new video shows highlights from this event.

About 85 percent of the in-plant’s volumes come from the transactional part of the operation, Rohrbach told managers. But the in-plant is part of the Creative Business Operation (CBO) team, which is responsible for everything from design through shipping. The CBO group produces marketing, promotional, advertising and corporate pieces. Nearly all of this creative work was being outsourced.

In-plant managers listen to Tom Rohrbach discuss his in-plant's insourcing journey.

As part of its seven-step analysis, the in-plant utilized shop floor data to determine whether an opportunity existed and define the scale of that opportunity. Progressive conducted device-by-device process reviews to understand the capacity and utilization of hardware and software. Then for each job, the in-plant considered whether it could be internally produced and if internal capabilities would need to be added or modified.

To learn more and watch the full presentation, visit bit.ly/ProgIns.