Bringing It 
All Together

IN A CLASSIC "Peanuts" comic strip, Schroeder confronts Charlie Brown with scores of numbers to illustrate the ineptitude of their eternally winless baseball team. He builds quite a case, and when he finally finishes recounting the team's blundering exploits, Charlie Brown offers a curt reply.

"Tell your statistics to shut up," he says.

Yes, numbers can conspire against us. But for some, statistics can be a saving grace, a lifeline and validation to support hard work and dedication. Such is the case for the Oregon Department of Administrative Services (DAS) Publishing & Distribution department, where the numbers help support its value to the Beaver State. Because of that value, expressed in hard dollar savings, there is little to no talk about privatizing the Salem-based in-plant's printing and mailing operation.

Still, there is no room for complacency at DAS Publishing & Distribution, notes Debbie Gallagher, deputy for operations.

"Sometimes people think we're just Kinko's," she says of the copy shop mentality. "But we provide so much more than just a printing service."

To appease everyone's inner Schroeder, here's a brief glimpse of DAS Publishing & Distribution by the numbers:

• The 91-employee shop boasts a $15 million budget and 70,000 square feet of operating space.
• Approximately 60 percent of all jobs the in-plant produces find their way into the mail stream, with 2.3 million pieces of mail sent out each month. Ninety-seven percent of the materials mailed get some level of postal discount, with postage savings totaling approximately $5 million per biennium.
• Twelve DAS trucks travel across the state delivering product to agencies, making 550 stops per day with in excess of 20,000 pounds of materials.

DAS Publishing & Distribution produces negotiable documents (titles, checks, warrants, bonds), client notices, variable data, booklets (stitched, coiled and three-hole drilled) and data center printing. It provides consultation and job planning, graphic design, electronic publishing, CD work, binding and other services. Offset work is sent out to Corrections Services or to prequalified vendors.

Using IBM Infoprint 4100s and a range of Canon digital printers (soon to be replaced with Kodak and Ricoh gear), the in-plant serves more than 1,500 customers in state agencies, cities, counties and municipalities all over Oregon. Variable data is used on a large portion of the printed materials the in-plant produces, including jury summonses for 34 counties, statements, invoices and client notices for the Department of Human Services. Its copy center handles all the general printing needs of the agencies—training materials, flyers and other informational pieces.

Savings Through Consolidation

Perhaps one of the biggest savings generators took place five years ago with the consolidation of the data center print shops of other agencies. Previously, there were three major data copy centers serving 12 agencies, a trio of delivery systems and five major mail processing centers. Most agencies had large equipment—the DMV had an OCR sorter; an older barcode sorter was being run by the Secretary of State's office; and all of them had different inserters.

"They only used the equipment for their jobs, and only at the peak times for those agencies," Gallagher notes of the inefficiencies. "When we consolidated all those pieces into one location, we made it possible for both the big and small agencies to automate their processes, save money and get the benefit of presorting.

"Since we commingle all mail, we were able to spread the savings out to the small agencies, too. They had been spending the full rate to send their mail pieces each month."

Tim Hendrix, program manager for DAS Publishing & Distribution, notes the efficiencies gained were apparent from the beginning.

"Within days [of consolidating data centers], we tripled our data center print output," he says. "At the same time as the consolidation, we were doing a digital printing upgrade, so we moved our secure print facility to another location in the building that was much larger."

Print/Mail Merger

DAS Publishing & Distribution has had much success with consolidation; 10 years prior to the data center/print merge, the organization brought printing and mailing under one roof, which proved to be a major coupe on several fronts. The relationship between mailing and printing was greatly solidified, according to Gallagher, with the full staff concentrating on the big picture: printing, processing and mailing while obtaining the maximum postal discount.

The in-plant relies on Pitney Bowes mail processing gear, including four FlowMaster FPS split drive inserting systems (two cutsheet, two continuos-feed) and a 112-pocket Olympus II multi-tier RAF SE OCR inserter. Because of the efficiencies provided by the Pitney Bowes equipment, DAS Publishing & Distribution has been able to reduce its number of inserters from nine to four. As previously noted, the enhanced sorting capability enables the in-plant to garner some level of postal discount on 97 percent of all materials that get mailed.

Part of the jobs are read by the inserters with OMR (Optical Mark Reader) lines, to perform intelligent inserting functions such as matching, collating and pulling from specific stations to insert multiple pages into one envelope.

Workflow Coordinators

"We have workflow coordinators here, a fairly new position," Gallagher explains. "They...run around between production and the CSRs to make sure everything is set up for jobs to begin. If need be, we'll run the jobs through preflight, variable data or some other program if necessary, then they'll get sent to a print queue. Print operators program the equipment and start printing the document and verifying the counts.

"Those documents are put in secure cages and moved through the production floor for the inserting and presorting," she continues. "Again, they verify the counts to make sure that what the customer said was in the job is printed, and what is printed matches what is going to go to the inserters. Then we run it through the OCR and deliver it to the post office."

Online Ordering Popular

Print/mail procurement has been greatly enhanced for agency customers. They can use DAS Publishing & Distribution's custom and user-friendly online ordering system. A user can fill out the job ticket, attach the files, generate a job number, see the final cost of the job and follow its status online.

"We've been running the system in its current state for seven years, with modifications made to it," Hendrix says. "We use EFI's Logic system for internal job tracking. The system itself has been customized to the unique needs of state government. About 95 percent of jobs that come into the plant come through the order system."

Outside Procurement

When a job calls for offset printing, that's when DAS Publishing & Distribution turns to its electronic bulletin board for competitive bidding. Based on an old (but popular) e-mail system called First Class Mail, two contract buyers post the jobs for vendors to bid on. The system then sorts the responses and ferrets out the lowest bid. While the system is somewhat dated, Hendrix says it is extremely popular with printers, who went as far as to testify before legislators when it was in danger of becoming cut.

Jobs bid out (generally a project will fetch between three and 15 bids) are not insignificant, with an average of 116 jobs procured for $308,000 per month.

Gallagher notes that DAS Publishing & Distribution has saved considerable dollars for agencies that previously sent out card/letter combos at the full postal rate. In some cases, DAS Publishing & Distribution has been able to convert jobs that were traditionally multi-piece envelope stuffs into variable data postcards, saving on postage and printing costs.

A Customer Relations Focus

A unique differentiator for DAS Publishing & Distribution, from an in-plant standpoint, is having a customer relations management staff. This is a must-have at the state level, insists Gallagher.

"We have different customers with a variety of needs," she says, "so we need to have people there who can understand those needs, understand what's available for printing and mailing, and respond to them.

"Our CRMs are not like a sales force, and they're not just data entry types, either," Gallagher continues. "They're more like consultants, solution providers and project coordinators. We get some pretty big jobs that take a lot of coordination, scheduling and timing."

Some major equipment changes are in store for the in-plant. DAS is making the switch from Canon printers to Kodak and Ricoh gear in its next agreement. Included in the new package:

• 1 Kodak Digimaster EX150
• 3 Kodak Digimaster EX300s
• 3 Kodak i440 scanners
• 1 Ricoh Pro C751EX color printer
• 4 Ricoh Pro 1107EXs
• 2 Ricoh Pro 907EXs
• 1 Ricoh Aficio MP 6001

The Pitney Bowes gear is already in place, as is a new collator and perfect binder.

According to Gallagher, the in-plant has learned to do more with less (the operation lost 14 employees in the last round of budget cuts). But with enhanced automation and the benefits reaped from the consolidations, she is confident DAS Publishing & Distribution will continue to satisfy agencies throughout Oregon.

"We provide a valuable, convenient one-stop customer focus service that's easy to access and allows agencies to focus on their core functions, and know that their documents are going to be printed accurately, securely and on time," she concludes.