Digital Color Brings Big Payoff

IF YOU veer away from the Las Vegas Strip and drive about a mile east, until the Hard Rock Casino fades away in your rear view mirror, you’ll hit the campus of the University of Nevada-Las Vegas (UNLV), an academic oasis on the fringes of the casino world. Celebrating 50 years in 2007, the university now hosts more than 28,000 students on its 350-acre campus.

Providing UNLV’s printing for 38 of those 50 years has been the Reprographics/Design Services (R/DS) department, now operating out of a 7,200-square-foot facility in the center of campus, plus an adjoining 2,000-square-foot copy center. With 20 full-time and four student employees, the in-plant recently made a serious upgrade to its digital printing capabilities by trading in two of its Xerox printers for an iGen3 110 digital production press.

Clearly this was a good move. Since installing the iGen3 in April, the in-plant has surpassed one million impressions—more than it did in a year on its Xerox DocuColor 6060.

“As more of our customers realize what the iGen can do for us, demand is growing every day,” says Les Raschko, R/DS director. “It allows us to respond quickly, meet tight deadlines and produce a quality product.”

Though the shop’s two A.B. Dick presses still see a lot of work, offset volumes and run lengths have definitely been declining in recent years, as have the number of monochrome quick print jobs.

“This decline was due in large part to documents being digitized and posted on the Internet and the population explosion of MFD office copiers on campus,” says Paul Kurzynowski, reprographics manager. “The decline in our monochromatic copying meant we had excess black-and-white capacity, and while we had a DocuColor 6060 for short-run digital color, we were still having to outsource short-run color in the 1,000 to 3,000 copy range. So we basically replaced two machines with one.”

Currently, the in-plant is meeting demands for personalization for marketing materials, post cards and brochures. R/DS also recently took on a project to print the inauguration program for the university’s new president. And the possibilities seem to keep presenting themselves.

“R/DS now reports to the VP of Advancement so we will be more involved than ever in producing advancement, recruitment, student life and fund-raising materials for the university,” says Raschko. “We have had meetings with Admissions and Undergrad Recruitment on the potential for the iGen in producing personalized recruitment materials and have already individualized mailings for the Bursar’s office.”

A Technology Leader

One of the first printers in Nevada to install an iGen3, R/DS has also led the charge toward other cutting-edge technologies. It was in the vanguard of the online ordering revolution back in 2000 when it implemented a homegrown Lotus-based application for stationery and envelopes.

“Most printing customers do not understand printing, let alone ordering printing,” explains Kurzynowski. “We had to make it as easy and effortless as possible.”

In 2002, due to the growth in customer requirements, the in-plant’s IT director, Jason Peraza, designed a new online ordering system, called Rebel Copy. It’s still in use today.

“After assessing our needs and doing some research, we decided to go in-house for the development of the next version of our online services,” remarks Kurzynowski. “We established that open source Web and database technologies provided the access to resources and low cost of development that we desired.”

Online ordering has improved turnaround times and reduced costs, due to the reduction in labor.

“Orders for certain varieties of orders begin to print as soon as the customer hits the ‘submit order’ button,” says Kurzynowski. “This frees our creative and production staff to focus their efforts on more complex orders.”

Marketing Mavens

Another area in which R/DS took an early lead was in marketing. For years the in-plant has marketed its services with flyers, e-mail announcements and open houses—like the one being held at the end of this month to show off the new iGen3.

Marketing became essential after the in-plant was reorganized, starting in 1990. Prior to that, it had served mostly the administrative side of the school using outdated equipment and with no cost-recovery system in place to fund new gear. Raschko, who headed the news and publications department at the time, oversaw a merger between that group and printing that brought in new equipment and expanded the in-plant’s facility, at a cost of $2.2 million. To repay that, the in-plant had to expand its customer base, so it opened up its services to students and embarked on an aggressive marketing program that exists to this day.

“We are a business within a core business,” remarks Raschko. “We have to market our services to let everyone know that we’re here to serve them.”

And serve them the in-plant does, offering everything from design and prepress through bindery. With a $1.5 million operating budget, R/DS prints anything from stationery, brochures, newsletters and course packs to posters and vinyl banners, which it outputs on its two wide-format printers. It handles forms management and distribution, graphic standards enforcement and copyright clearance for course packs. It also recently got permission to insource print work from other governmental organizations. Plus, the in-plant oversees a $1.8 million copier management program that includes 205 units all over campus.

Though UNLV’s close proximity to the temptations of the casino world might seem like a dangerous distraction, it has its benefits. UNLV runs one of the country’s preeminent hotel management programs, the William F. Harrah College of Hotel Administration. The college recently received a $30 million gift from Harrah’s Foundation. Some of those funds are certain to find their way into new printing projects, and Raschko and Kurzynowski hope they can use their marketing expertise and digital printing prowess to make sure that work reaches their in-plant.

Developing New Applications

Reprographics/Design Services at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas prides itself on its willingness to listen to customers’ suggestions and offer new services as a result. A great example is the online course schedule application it developed.

Summer term administrators came to the in-plant looking for a way to reduce the cost and turnaround time involved in producing course catalogs. Since course data typically did not reach their office until the last minute, the catalog always turned into a rush job—yet with more than 80 pages it took quite a while to lay out.

So IT Director Jason Peraza and his team developed an automated layout application to speed up the process. But then they went further.

“That project evolved from an automated catalog layout application, to utilizing that data to feed out to the Web,” Peraza says. This allowed students to check out course times and content online. What’s more, thanks to an administrative interface created by the in-plant, the summer term office was given the ability to manage and update the course data.

“As class times changed, as they were cancelled, as they became full, that information would be updated in the database and feed out live to the Web,” Peraza notes. “As additional catalogs [are] ordered, those catalogs have the most up-to-date information.”

In time, he adds, this may evolve into a scenario where students can order catalogs from a counter and have the latest version printed for them while they wait.

Embracing New Technology

Getting new equipment, like the iGen3 or the Presstek Vector TX52 the shop added in January, is not as big a challenge as at other in-plants because R/DS is able to put money aside (after recovering its costs) in a special fund. This will come in handy as it prepares to add XMPie variable data software to replace the Creo Darwin software it currently uses. Raschko says the in-plant will also add a creaser, as well as equipment to make magnetic signage.

“Reprographics at UNLV has a history of embracing new technology, bringing the first DocuTech to campus in 1990, creating a Web-based online ordering system early in the game, and purchasing the campus’s first Adobe Acrobat license for key customers,” notes Raschko.

Adding capabilities and seeking out new ways to serve customers are all part of Raschko’s vision.

“We want to be the communication provider on campus,” he says—no matter what form that communication takes.