Sweet Home Alabama
Jim Thorne, of The Colonial BancGroup, has doubled the size of his in-plant, brought in new equipment and shown his company he can save it money.
Fresh out of the Navy and looking to take an architectural drafting course at Patterson State Technical College, Jim Thorne was disappointed to learn that the class was full. So he took a graphic arts class instead. From taking that class, Thorne says, printing "got in my blood."
Thorne worked in various print shops in the Montgomery, Ala., area during the day and took classes at night, earning a degree in graphic arts. He was then hired to help move the in-plant for The Colonial BancGroup from Birmingham to the home office in Montgomery in 1988.
Thorne is now director of corporate purchasing/printing for Colonial, and oversees the in-house purchasing department, print shop and forms distribution center, which employs a staff of 14. The shop serves 240 branches in Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, Texas and Nevada.
The shear number of branches has caused Thorne to change the way he deals with his customers. A separate internal operations department now trains employees on how to order the printed material they need.
"I used to go around and visit all the branches, when we were just in Alabama, to get feedback," Thorne says. Most contact with customers today, however, is through faxes, phone calls and mailings.
When he started at Colonial, Thorne says the shop only housed two offset presses. It now boasts six offset presses, including an A.B.Dick 3500 that the shop added in November, and a Minolta copier.
"Because of our run lengths and the color requirements for special projects, the small offset presses work real well with our workflow," Thorne says.
At the end of last year the in-plant also implemented a complete design and desktop publishing system with Macintosh G3 computers. The end of 1998 was also a time for physical growth at the shop. The 6,500-square-foot facility almost doubled in size to 12,500 square feet in December. The in-plant also has a complete bindery department including a Duplo air-feed collator/bookletmaker/stitcher/folder and a Challenge cutter that is pre-programmed for jobs common to the shop. In addition, Thorne has changed the way work goes to press.
"Since I have come to work here we have gone from electrostatic quick plates to top-of-the-line Mitsubishi Silvermaster plates," Thorne explains. "With our desktop publishing we can make a Silvermaster and go right to the press for a lot of runs that were requiring metal plates."
Thorne has worked hard to get new equipment for the shop, and then used this equipment exactly as he promised his parent company he would, bringing in a 30 to 40 percent savings over his outside competitors. Almost everything his customers need is done in-house, with very little work being outsourced. Thorne is proud of this fact, and says the only thing sent outside now is film for process color jobs.
"We are a closed-loop shop, and that is something that I am very proud of," Thorne declares. "We can do just about all functions internally."
He attributes this self-sufficient attitude to his staff, who he says works very well as a team. That team may grow even larger, as Thorne is considering a merger between the data processing and graphics departments. He says the in-plant would then be able to purchase equipment that would benefit both areas, and bring in more savings for the company.
Thorne, a life-long resident of Montgomery, is married and has a seven-year-old son. He says he enjoys the stable economy of living in the state capital and its central location. He notes he is just a few hours away if he wants to visit the beach, the mountains or a bigger city like Atlanta.
