Talk from the Top Bindery and Mailing

Top 50 in-plants know the importance of having the right bindery and mailing tools.

By Eric Martin

Printing fabulous-looking work quickly and cheaply is all well and good, but having the finished product merely sit in your in-plant won't make customers too happy.

The in-plants that make up this year's IPG Top 50 understand the importance of having the right bindery and mailing tools to get the job done and in the hands of customers as soon as possible.

That's one reason Tim Steenhoek, head of Document Management for ING, in Des Moines, Iowa, integrates mailing and labeling with the basic printing process, a successful combination that landed his shop at number 15 on the IPG Top 50.

"We understand the distribution of a product before we even print it," he says. "One group might go out next-day air, another group to the Internet, and a third group will be added to five other pieces and mailed. We use a lot of software tools to assemble and sort the final product before we go to print."

Over the past two years, Steenhoek's shop has acquired an HP Indigo 3050 six-color press, a twin tower IBM 4100 that handles 1,220 pages per minute, a Böwe Bell & Howell DemandWorks self-seal unit, a GBC coil binding machine that processes 70,000 pages per hour, and much more.

"We have self-seal units on two Xerox devices, so the printer prints, folds and seals in one shot," he says.

Steenhoek's shop uses all digital printing equipment, so pieces are addressed at the same time they're printed.

"All the material is presorted," he says, "so it goes straight from the printer to the mail train. That's one example of how we think of distribution before we print."

One such job was a run of 4.5 million mailers to notify customers of ING's privacy promise.

"We used our self seal and variable data processes, took all our records, did the postal cleansing, presorting and bar coding, all before it went to the printer," describes Steenhoek. "When it got there it was already a perfect piece of mail."

Building on Success

In the Chicago suburbs, Ace Hardware's in-plant found similar benefits after enhancing its bindery and mailing capabilities.

"Four years ago, Ace Hardware began a customer loyalty program, and we were approached to see whether we could create and produce mail pieces welcoming new members or offering 'members only' benefits," says Rick Salinas, production manager of the Ace Reprographics Division in Downers Grove, Ill., which ranks number 20 in the Top 50.

"In the beginning, we produced program pieces using a two-color MAN Roland and Pitney Bowes Smart Mailer," says Salinas. "During that first year, we spent a lot of time understanding postal service processes and produced 850,000 variable data mail pieces."

Because of the success of the program over the past three years, Ace Reprographics has added a new Screen computer-to-plate system with a Trueflow front-end, Xerox VIPP IDE software with three operators to handle variable data, and PostalSoft Business Edition software to organize the databases for mailing and allow the company to receive postal discounts. Two new Colter & Peterson SABER cutters were also installed to help handle increased volumes of work.

"We've gotten much better at variable data and mail processing," says Salinas. "We've also been approved for on-site postal verification, which allows us to have the post office come to our facility to verify mail, and we are able to use a freight forwarder to send mail directly to bulk-mail centers across the country, saving us both time and money. This year, we will process in excess of 12 million variable data pieces."

Ink-jet Addressing

Gary Boyd, manager of Printing Services for Iowa State University, says that his shop's mailing services have been greatly improved by the installation of a Cheshire Print Mail Wide-Array ink-jet addressing machine.

"The new machine uses ink cartridge print technology, provides improved address print quality and eliminates the waste ink issues the older machine created," says Boyd, whose shop landed at spot number 44 on the Top 50. "In addition, the computer system is Windows-based and easier to use. Our customers really like the print quality."

Boyd says that his shop has also replaced an older tabbing machine with a new Rena XPS high-speed tabber.

"Again, it offers easier make-ready speed, faster production speed, more flexibility, and improved quality," he says. "We're continually looking for ways to improve existing services and be more cost-effective."

It's All About the Customer

Integrating bindery and mail into printing services is all about providing the customer with a finished product, according to Dan Michalski, director of Digital Publishing and Printing for the University of Wisconsin's Department of Information Technology, in Madison.

"Our management has good technical values from previous commercial experiences, and using quality commercial equipment to build strong capabilities puts us in the driver's seat," says Michalski. It has also helped put his in-plant in the Top 50's number 36 spot.

One recent improvement is the addition of a Standard Horizon collator binder with a three-knife trimmer to support booklet making, perfect binding and coil binding.

What stands out in the way of finishing room improvements for Michael J. Murphy, production operations manager at Springfield, Missouri's Gospel Publishing House, is the in-plant's one-year-old Muller Martini Prima Plus saddle stitcher.

"It has inside and outside ink-jetting, offers selective binding and includes a merchandise tipper so that we can glue a CD in a jacket into a magazine," says Murphy, whose shop claims the number 22 spot on the Top 50. "Whenever we ink-jet, the stacker sorts it by ZIP, bundles it, checks it against the master mail list and ships it out the door. It works beautifully."