Steering Out Of The Merge

With careful leadership and an eye for the bottom line, John Hurt guided his in-plant through a major change.

By Mike Llewellyn

A VETERAN of Operation Desert Storm and a pilot who uses his own Piper Cherokee to help the local sheriff's department chase down stolen cars and deer poachers, John Hurt is not afraid of facing challenges.

So when his company, Oklahoma Gas and Electric (OGE), decided to merge its printing and mailing operations in 1999, Hurt jumped right into the task, moving into his current role as supervisor of Printing and Mailing Services in the process.

Hurt had been working for the utility since 1973 while he was still in school at Southern Nazarene University in Oklahoma City. He worked his way up through the ranks of the accounting department for 20 years until he arrived at his post supervising the formidable mailing operation.

Three years ago, as part of a company-wide directive to slim down, OGE's printing department swung into Hurt's jurisdiction. Before he knew it, the human resources major was trying get three separate budgets to mesh (printing, mailing and administrative) while simultaneously getting 17 employees cross-trained for a much different workflow.

"Because mailing is so closely related to printing, the two merged to provide the company with an end-to-end process," he explains.

And since OGE prints and mails 40,000 statements every day to its 700,000 retail and wholesale customers in Oklahoma and western Arkansas, this made perfect sense. Still, the merger wasn't easy.

"When I first started as manager [of both operations] making sure the two departments were working together properly was the top priority," Hurt recalls.

It took close to a year to have the staff cross-trained to Hurt's satisfaction, and by the time it was all over, the new operation had even undergone a little construction to knock down a wall and install a door between the two facilities.

Even though the merger went through three years ago, Hurt still considers cost-cutting to be his top priority.

"The budget is the biggest challenge," he says. "We always have to do more with less."

Hurt says the merger allowed him to reassign several staff positions. Additionally, he says he's been able to trim off some excess cost by waiting until the leases on the in-plant's copiers are up, and then buying them outright in lieu of renewing the agreement. To that end, the shop has just picked up three new Lanier 5705s.

Hurt says the in-plant also will be picking up a new color copier in the near future to take care of the manuals, presentations and financial reports required by the company.

Promoting Teamwork

Hurt credits teamwork as the driving factor behind his shop's productivity.

"We hold coordination meetings with team leaders, with the senior printer, the senior mailer, so everybody knows what's going on," he says. "We encourage communication continuously."

To augment the in-plant's revenue and keep the bottom line at bay, Hurt says insourcing is becoming a vital part of the workload. It currently makes up 5 percent of the shop's total income.

"We're just getting into this," he says. "We want to utilize the equipment we have to its full capacity."

Hurt says OGE's management was quick to approve the move toward insourcing because they see it as a way for the in-plant to reduce its costs.

"We look for business from non-profits or other utility companies such as municipal water, other electric utilities, the chamber of commerce and the Boy Scouts," he says.

Also, other members of the Oklahoma chapter of the International Publishing Management Association (IPMA) have organized a "share-sourcing" system whereby local in-plants trade work they may not have the equipment to handle.

A dedicated member of IPMA, Hurt serves as the chapter/member representative on the organization's international board of directors, and is responsible for recruiting new members and establishing new chapters. He's also a past president of the Central Oklahoma Chapter.

In his downtime, Hurt gets no rest. This father of four doesn't seem to mind, though. He logs about 100 hours a year on the Piper Cherokee and is a district commissioner for the Boy Scouts of America. But the real challenges start again on Monday morning.

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