The '90s In Review - New Trends Aren't So New

A look back at the in-plant world of the early 1990s reveals a lot of the same concerns and predictions that we see today—but a lot of changes, as well.

As one pages through issues of In-Plant Reproductions magazine (now called In-Plant Graphics, for those of you who have been asleep) from 1990, the most interesting observation is how similar the topics are to those covered in 1999.

Even at the beginning of the decade, in-plant managers were worried about facilities management. Like today, IPR urged them to learn their costs by charging back and to justify themselves to management.

And contrary to contemporary thought, the color printing craze is nothing new. Color was on the rise even back then. Our articles predicted that "in-plants will invest in more color units on their presses as color continues to gain momentum in corporate communications."

A 1990 article on emerging trends, in fact, could have been written today. Computer technology was predicted to continue to merge with conventional presses, leading to more automation. Press equipment, we said, would continue to produce images faster and with much more accuracy. Finishing equipment would become even more user-friendly. These are the same "predictions" that experts continue to make today.

But things were different in 1990, as you all know. Digital printers and copiers were not yet as prevalent. In a 1990 article, Steve Kramer of Multigraphics predicted a change in the way materials would be printed: "Laser printers will take over more of the low end, short-run market and the offset printer will concentrate more on short-run color." His predictions seems to have come true.

In other cases, we weren't so right. In January 1991 our "experts" predicted that flexographic printing would make major inroads into the in-plant market in the '90s due to its ease of operation, cheap plates and quality. That didn't quite turn out as they figured it would.

Direct Imaging Debut

In 1991, direct-to-plate and even direct-to-press technologies were already causing a minor stir in the in-plant world. Heidelberg debuted its GTO-DI (direct imaging) press at Graph Expo that year.

PostScript was around and some in-plants were getting jobs on disk. The computer industry was beginning to change its strategy from one of vendor isolation to vendor cooperation. This yielded a smoother melding of technologies and unified efforts to develop standards. Still, electronic publishing seemed to scare more people in the early '90s than it does now.

Imagesetters were already around, but many in-plants were still sending color separations to outside vendors. They were only beginning to examine the price and quality of equipment to determine if they should bring this capability in-house.

Likewise, color copiers were being installed in a few in-plants, but many shops were still debating whether to add them or go on outsourcing their color copying. Additionally, some of our stories expressed lots of lamentation about the loss of "craftsmanship" engendered by press automation and an influx of copiers.

Buried Gold

One of the biggest changes to the traditional in-plant environment was announced in 1990. Buried on page 39 of our October issue that year was an article on the announcement of the Xerox DocuTech Production Publisher, "a device that can produce black-and-white pages, booklets, newsletters or similar documents from start to finish." Of course, that first model could only scan its input, but its ability to store documents digitally started a revolution in the way in-plants would print, bringing the phrase "on-demand printing" into widespread use.

A few weeks earlier, Eastman Kodak had unveiled its own centralized digital printing system powered by LionHeart software. LionHeart networked users to an Ektaprint 1392 printer, letting them print at 92 pages per minute. Pitted for a while as an alternative to the DocuTech, LionHeart never quite gained the popularity that the Xerox product—and its offshoots—have.

The early '90s saw a big push toward recycled paper, with government and university in-plants mandating recycled use. While those mandates may still be in place, the demand for recycled paper has died down quite a bit. A recent IPG paper buying survey revealed that just 7.8 percent of in-plants are required to use recycled stock for all jobs, while 32.1 percent have no requirement to use it.

A Decade Of FM Fear

Facilities management caused as much concern in the early '90s as it does now, though today's managers are much more prepared to justify their operations. Throughout the decade we have run stories about FM takeovers where long-time managers were fired and employees who transferred to the FM lost medical coverage and vacation time. We have talked about the drop in quality of the printing after the FM took over, and the lack of dedication exhibited by FM employees—the very same issues that we stress in our articles today.

Throughout the 1990s, corporate downsizing (no, not "rightsizing") continued to spread fear among in-plants that had traditionally justified themselves based on factors like confidentiality and control, rather than cost savings. Increased efforts by outsourcing firms forced in-plants to track their costs and keep an eye on waste—in short, to run their shops like businesses. Thus, computer management systems increasingly began to replace pegboard scheduling methods, and in-plants began to focus more attention on marketing their services to customers.

Spurring them to a lot of this change was the In-Plant Management Association (IPMA), which, on June 5, 1994, changed its name to the International Publishing Management Association. In 1996, the National State Printing Association followed suit, rechristening itself the National State Publishing Association. Even some in-plants, notably the California Office of State Publishing, dumped the word "printing" from their names in favor of "publishing" to emphasize their changing responsibilities.

Past Visions Of The Future

In 1991 we ran an interesting piece of prognostication predicting what the in-plant manager of 1995 would look like. Among our prophecies:

• In 1995, managers will no longer be called Printing Supervisors but Graphic Communications Managers.

• Managers will have responsibility for desktop color film output, purchasing jobs from outside printers, and converting the in-plant into an environmentally sensitive operation.

• In-plants will have moved from general services to the marketing division.

• In-plants will take over mailing and fulfillment for communications products.

How many of our predictions came true for you?

Of course, missing from that article was any mention of in-plants merging with data center printing operations. In fact, another article in the same issue talked about in-plants battling with data centers over which equipment to buy—with no word of merging. This has become one of the prevalent trends in the latter part of the 1990s.

Two "hot" '90s trends that seemed to have faded from prominence are waterless printing and Total Quality Management (TQM). For a while everyone seemed to be talking about forming TQM teams. Those teams may still be together, but they rarely make the headlines they did five years ago. Likewise, waterless presses are no doubt still churning out high-quality printing, but as a trend, they are no longer so hot.

The events of the past couple years have eclipsed most of the changes of the early '90s, though. Digital networks have allowed customers to send jobs from remote locations. The Internet has changed not only the type of jobs that in-plants are printing, but the way jobs are delivered. Many in-plants have implemented online job ordering for business cards and stationery. Other shops have gotten into the Web site design business.

Bob Neubauer can be contacted at: bneubauer@napco.com.

Best Of The '90s

In-Plant Graphics and the International Publishing Management Association have been sponsoring the annual In-Print contest for many years now. Each year, one in-plant is selected out of all the first-place winners for the exceptional quality of its printed work.

Here are all the Best of Show winners from the past decade. Clearly, Boeing has been doing something right, having won four times in the '90s. Also notable is Phillips Petroleum, a two-time winner.

• 1999 - University of Missouri-Columbia

• 1998 - Hitachi Data Systems

• 1997 - Boeing

• 1996 - Phillips Petroleum

• 1995 - Brigham Young University

• 1994 - Phillips Petroleum

• 1993 - Boeing

• 1992 - USAA

• 1991 - Boeing

• 1990 - Boeing

Industry Leaders

Along with our Manager of the Year (all of whom we honored in November), IPG has long picked an annual Industry Leader of the Year. This award has honored individuals, companies and even technologies. Here's the honor role for the 1990s:

• 1990 - Lawrence Herbert, president and CEO of Pantone, for developing a standardized color selection process.

• 1991 - John Dreyer, president of Pitman, for his devotion to the industry and his management skills.

• 1992 - Charles Holt, senior vice president of Xerox and the chief engineer and architect of the DocuTech.

• 1993 - Scott Brownstein, research physicist at Eastman Kodak, who was credited with inventing Photo CD.

• 1994 - Direct Digital Press Technology: Xeikon, Indigo and Heidelberg were honored for their advancements.

• 1995 - Stochastic Screening: Linotype-Hell and Agfa were honored for their leadership in this field.

• 1996 - Computer-to-plate Technology: Chosen for its impact on the printing industry.

• 1997 - Don Kendall of Prime Digital Imaging, Gary Smith of Prime Printing, and Randy Akers of Unisource were honored for the in-plant workshops they developed.

• 1998 - Allstate Print Communications Center was honored for its innovation and for being a model.

• 1999 - Adobe systems was lauded for advancing PDF technology.

Bob Neubauer