Sticking With It
For Bob Hulett, printing has been a lifelong interest. He has turned that interest into a successful career with Beckman Coulter.
FOUR YEARS of high school graphic arts classes paved the way for Robert Hulett's future career in the printing industry. And though subsequent studies at California's Fullerton College increased his knowledge of print and prepress technology, Hulett already knew what he wanted to be—a printer.
"It was an interest way back in high school," he recalls. "Graphics really appealed to me."
Hulett knew that his father's company, Beckman Coulter, had an in-plant print shop, so when he got out of school he applied there, and was brought in to work in the bindery.
That was 26 years ago.
Except for a one-year stint in commercial printing sales, Hulett has spent his career at the Beckman Coulter in-plant, located in Fullerton, Calif. He is now manager of the central printing services division for the manufacturing giant.
The decades of in-plant experience would obviously make Hulett an expert in his field. But interestingly enough, he points to the one year he spent away from an in-plant environment as a great learning experience on how to run an in-house print shop.
"I probably would have struggled as an in-plant manager [without] having outside sales experience," Hulett explains. "You really have to have your salesmanship and team-building skills finely tuned because you can't go outside for business—you have a captive audience. You can't alienate them because they can go outside."
The 12,000-square-foot shop, which ranks 64th in size among all in-plants according to IPG survey data, prints instrument operating manuals, maintenance log books, chemistry manuals, product inserts and an array of small books. But what the in-plant specializes in is pressure-sensitive labels, which make up 60 percent of the workload. These are used for the numerous chemistry bottles the company produces.
About four years ago, Hulett changed the focus of his operation. Instead of printing forms and other materials for the company, he decided to specialize. Central printing became part of the manufacturing division and began to work exclusively with the company's technical documents. Beckman Coulter has a copy center as part of its office services division to handle copying and forms printing.
"I've been able to get rid of the responsibility of serving the walk-up customer and deploy my people in alignment with product development," says Hulett, who created project teams to handle jobs more effectively. "That ensures our position in the company."
He notes that by doing this, the 26 employees of central printing now feel they are a more essential part of the company. Instead of just supplying the human resources department with forms, for example, the in-plant is a part of the manufacturing process.
The in-plant is about to get even more work, Hulett says. The company has downsized its in-plant in Miami and is restructuring it as a satellite copy center. All non-copy production work will be sent to Hulett's in-plant, bringing an estimated $500,000 worth of jobs to his shop annually, he says.
Diverse Operation
Beckman Coulter's employees use lithographic, flexographic and digital technologies at the shop. Two Xerox 6135s produce about 20 percent of the work. Hulett says he implemented an all-digital workflow a few years ago, before the technical publications group was even ready for the technology. He then had to get them up to par with central printing's expertise.
Another recent addition to the in-plant includes a Harlequin RIP. Hulett points out that to print technical documents in Japanese, the shop would have had to send files to Japan to be RIPed. That inefficient practice has been avoided with the addition of the new RIP, and all work can now be done in-house and printed digitally.
More digital work my be on the horizon, Hulett feels, as well as manuals on CD and online publishing. It all depends on what customers request.
"It remains to be seen what media will be accepted by the customer base," he admits. "My focus will continue on pressure-sensitive labels. That's where our growth is."
