The Cluster Contender

by Bob Neubauer

As anyone with a printer or copier knows, equipment breaks down. So what's an in-plant to do if its DocuTech or 9110 goes down in the middle of a busy week? That's what Hal Cypert asked himself.

"If you've got a fast-paced environment, sometimes you can't afford to be down for two or three hours, or overnight, if you're waiting on a part," notes Cypert, duplicating services supervisor for the County of Tulare, in Visalia, Calif. That's the main reason his 15-employee shop installed a T/R Systems Micropress instead of a DocuTech.

"We did look seriously at the DocuTech," he admits. "Our concern was, at the time, what if it went down? We've got all of our eggs in one basket, and no way of really being able to have adequate backup. That's one of the main advantages of a cluster printing system device, as opposed to just one Xerox DocuTech."

The in-plant installed two Minolta DI-620 black-and-white printers, each with inline folding and saddle stitching, and a Minolta CF-910 color printer. When one of the units goes down for maintenance, the shop continues printing with the other units. The system is doing so well, the in-plant will soon add a second color unit.

With a Micropress, one job can be printed on several printers simultaneously, or each printer can print a separate job. The County of Tulare is soon to open a satellite copy shop, Cypert says, and he plans to install two more black-and-white units and a color printer there so jobs can be sent digitally from the main location to the satellite shop. Cypert anticipates the Micropress will get a lot more use once his shop's Internet site opens in six months and customers start sending jobs digitally.

Cypert says the Micropress and the DocuTech both had the features his in-plant wanted. In fact, the DocuTech had more than he needed.

"The additional cost for the additional features we didn't really need—it just didn't justify," he explains.

Another issue that made him lean towards the Micropress was training. Xerox required him to send two employees out of town for training; T/R Systems did the training on site, so all of his employees got to learn.

The Micropress has turned his in-plant around, Cypert says. Before getting it, lots of work was sent to quick printers or printed on a press.

"Now we have eliminated our need to vend out business" to quick copiers, he says. "Last year we vended out over $100,000 worth." This year, that work is staying in-house.

"We've been extremely pleased with the reliability of the T/R System," Cypert enthuses.