Memphis In-plant Doubles Up On Printers

Jeff Davis, coordinator of creative and printing services at Southwest Tennessee Community College, in Memphis, Tenn., has had a long-standing relationship with Konica Minolta. Since the purchase of a Konica Minolta bizhub C500 press (with EFI Fiery controller) five years ago, Davis has been impressed with the quality of the machine. So when he decided to boost his in-plant's finishing capabilities, he went with two bizhub C6000 presses.

Prior to installing those presses in July, Davis also looked at a Konica Minolta bizhub C8000, several Canons, a Ricoh 720, and a Xerox 700.

“While I liked the C8000 press, I decided to go with the C6000s because it worked out better from a budget standpoint—if one goes down, we can pick up from another machine,” he explains.

Through the purchase of those presses, Davis was also able to renegotiate the click charges for the C500 press, so the in-plant would be charged the same price as on the C6000s.

The in-plant is part of the college’s communications and marketing department—which includes 11 employees, with six of them assisting on the printing and graphics end. Some of the jobs that the shop produces for the students and staff include color brochures, posters up to 12x18˝, tri-folded programs, saddle-stitched booklets, mailers, information packets and business cards. While it no longer produces offset work in-house, the in-plant handles outsourcing of that work when needed.

Since installing the two biz^-hub C6000s, Davis has been impressed with the different finishing capabilities they have. For example, one has an FS-521 100-sheet stapling finisher and several punching units, a GBC GP-501, a DS-501 three-punch die and a DS-502 19-hole Cerlox punch die. The other C6000 features an FS-521 stapling finisher, an FD-503 multi-fold punch unit and an SD-506 saddle-stitching unit.

“We do a lot of GBC work here at the college,” remarks Davis, “and connecting that in-line to these presses and being able to pre-punch that material will save us a lot of time in manpower, especially when we produce large catalogs that need to be ‘GBCed.’ ”

Along with the C6000s, the in-plant has also added Konica Minolta’s Printgroove workflow software—it’s first online job submission tool—which Davis expects to go live soon.

“With our satellite schools spanning up to 20 miles away, Printgroove will allow users to log into our intranet and submit jobs easily from any of those locations,” he says.