Savings In Black And White

With high-speed, black-and-white printers designed to bear the brunt of an in-plant's workload, managers want to see how fast the machines cut costs.

By Mike Llewellyn

JIM ALLEN, the newly appointed manager of Printing Services at New York City's Fashion Institute of Technology, runs a pair of Océ 2600s to handle flyers, instructional packets for professors and countless other nuts-and-bolts projects that come into the in-plant every day.

With black-and-white printing accounting for 85 percent of the in-plant's workload, the 2600s have become the backbone of the FIT shop.

"They're definitely workhorses," says Allen. "They do almost all of the work."

That's how many managers are characterizing their in-plant's high-speed black-and-white operations. Color may be critical—and it's important to be able to impress customers with slick aqueous coating or eye-catching finishing—but at the end of the day, it's digital black-and-white printing that's paying the bills at a lot of in-plants.

Doing It All With Digital

To get his customers to understand what digital printing can do, Doug Miller, director of printing and graphics at Grand Rapids Community College, spent the better part of a year replacing all of the campus analog copiers with digital devices. The move, which Miller says was part of a campus-wide document management program, was capped off by the installation of a Heidelberg Digimaster 9110.

Miller says the 16-employee Michigan in-plant installed the Digimaster because the shop was more interested in being assured of productivity than boasting a speedy machine.

That's not to say the Heidelberg isn't fast. At 110 ppm, it's among the fastest black-and-white printers on the market for high-speed, quality digital output. But Miller says the current machine actually replaced a Xerox DocuTech 135, which printed 135 ppm.

"The 9110, rated at 110 pages per minute, has a shorter paper path and handles paper in a more efficient way," he says, "so it actually out-produces the DocuTech."

But Linda Kratz, a big supporter of Xerox equipment, says a DocuTech 6115 takes care of the majority of work that comes through the doors of her in-plant very efficiently.

"We do a lot of training manuals with tabs," reports Kratz, senior supervisor of business support services for Merck in West Point, Pa. The company's research departments provide a great deal of support for the in-plant, she adds.

Kratz says the Xerox machine has turned out to be ideal for her shop because it handles short-run, on-demand jobs rapidly.

"It just RIPs so quickly," she says. "And being able to clean up the pages and make editing adjustments is also very important."

Kratz says she opted for the DocuTech because the 10-employee in-plant has had a long-running relationship with Xerox. The shop had considered a Heidelberg 9110, but Kratz explains that at the time she was looking for this equipment (almost two years ago), she felt the German company was still a little new to the high-speed digital game.

One of the first big benefits of bringing in the Xerox was that Kratz's customers could now send files to the in-plant electronically.

"They send it via e-mail, or if it's a really large file, we have a shared folder they can put it in," she says.

Black-and-white printing accounts for 80 percent of the workload at the Merck in-plant, with the other 20 percent going to color devices, like the Xerox DocuColor 2060 and a pair of DocuColor 12s. Kratz says that demand for color has remained steady over the past few years, but she has not seen much demand for printing black-and-white jobs in color.

"It's been a tough year,"" she says. "A lot of departments have been asked to cut back on their spending and this is one way that they can do it."

Focus On Customer Savings

"Cost," agrees Don Reid, supervisor of Printing Services at American River College (ARC). "Cost is the single most important reason to get into black-and-white printing."

For two years, the eight-employee Los Rios, Calif., in-plant has been pumping out copy with a Konica 7075. In fact, the machine cranks out products at such a low price per page—less than a penny—that Reid has worked out what may amount to the best deal an in-plant manager has ever given a customer.

"We negotiated the price down just as far as it can go, so now we offer black-and-white printing at no charge," he says.

What expenses are incurred by use of the machine are picked up by the school's administration, which is trying to ween faculty and staff off their costly habit of printing anything they can on high-maintenance desktop printers.

So back when Reid went hunting for the right machine, he was keeping his eyes peeled for a printer that could stand up to the demands of what he says is the largest educational institution in Northern California.

"I've been really happy with it," he says of the Konica 7075. "It just feels like a rugged, well-built machine."

Across the country, in Fitchburg, Mass., James Roger, director of information technology services at Fitchburg State College Press, has been busy looking for ways a high-speed, black-and-white device could save his customers money.

"You have to figure out what kind of institution we are," he says of the college. "Anything that gets handed out to students will most likely be in black and white."

Like many in-plants, Roger's shop relies very heavily on it's digital black-and-white business. Seventy-five percent of the jobs leaving the shop are printed in black toner. So he has spent a lot of time stacking up the pros and cons of the Canon imageRUNNER 110 and the DocuTech.

"We had reviewed extensively the difference between the Xerox and the Canon, looking into pricing and productivity," he says.

While the price of one of the machines is certainly an obvious concern, he says how well a machine works in his five-employee in-plant's environment is nearly equal in importance. What a device lacks in pricing can often be recouped by its productivity—and the cost to the customer will remain the same.

"We found that even though the Canon was rated a little slower [than the Xerox], it's actually faster," he argues.

Roger says that because the imageRUNNER 110 begins RIPing a document on the first page rather than the last, the machine can begin printing while the RIP is still processing the job.

"It saves time on the front end, so it fits right in, in this shop," he says.

He adds that because the imageRUNNER handles 11x17˝ stock, as well as 81⁄2x11˝, he can often cut the price and the run time of a job in half.

"For instance, I have a job out there right now. It's 68 pages. If I was running it on 81⁄2x11˝, you'd get charged for all 68," he says. "But now, you'll just get charged for half those clicks."

He notes that another trick he uses to help his color-thirsty, yet thrifty, customers save money is to recommend they print a cover in color and the bulk of their project in black and white.

However they choose to use the devices, most managers say one thing remains constant: Because high-speed, black-and-white printing is the back bone of a typical in-plant, making sure customers are getting the best possible price is priority number one.

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Mike Llewellyn can be contacted at: mllewellyn@napco.com