Respected In-plant Consultant, Manager Ray Chambers Dies

By Bob Neubauer

Ray Chambers

Known and loved for sharing his wisdom with fellow in-plant managers to help them avoid outsourcing, consultant and former in-plant manager Ray Chambers died yesterday at his home in western New York state.

For decades, Mr. Chambers was a popular speaker at Association of College and University Printers (ACUP+) and In-plant Printing and Mailing Association (IPMA) conferences, where managers hung on his every word as he offered advice to help them strengthen their operations. He wrote countless articles for In-plant Impressions over the past three decades, sharing his experience as a manager.

Ray Chambers gives a presentation at an in-plant conference.

Mr. Chambers managed in-plants in Texas, at the University of Louisville and at Juniata College, among others, and was a doctoral candidate at Penn State studying Higher Education Administration.

He married fellow in-plant manager Catherine Chambers and the couple started Chambers Management Group to consult with leaders in both the public and private sectors to help them understand and improve their in-plants. In 2013 he was inducted into the ACUP Hall of Fame, and he was honored in 2018 as IPMA’s contributor of the year.

Mike Loyd joins Ray and Cathy Chambers at IPMA 2022.

A tireless advocate of the value of in-plants, his southern-accented voice was muted in recent years by dementia and Parkinson's disease. He and Catherine attended the opening reception at the IPMA 2022 conference in Buffalo, New York, giving his many friends a last opportunity to see him.

In-plant Impressions joins the entire in-plant community in thanking our friend Ray Chambers for his selfless service to this industry. A more extensive article on his career will follow.

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Bob Neubauer Author's page

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.