Thinking Outside the Mailbox
Lehigh University's Fall 2012 semester begins on August 23, but Glenn Strause, director of Printing and Mailing Services, is focusing on August 22 as a red-letter day for the college's in-plant.
Why? The 22nd marks the planned grand opening of Mail at Campus Square, Lehigh's new full-service post office.
Previously, the in-plant operated a postal substation and housed 5,000 student mailboxes in the Ulrich Student Center in the middle of the Bethlehem, Pa.-based university. The student center shared building space with Grace Hall, a wrestling arena.
Earlier this year, the athletic center's good fortune left the in-plant wrestling with a dilemma. Thanks to a private donation, the entire building was slated for conversion into the Caruso Wrestling Complex, named after Mike Caruso, a three-time NCAA wrestling champion at Lehigh.
"What that meant to us was that we were being evicted," Strause chuckles. He chose to see the situation as an opportunity to enhance postal services.
The new post office will be located in the high-traffic Campus Square area, also home to the campus bookstore and other retailers. (It is moving into a former coffee shop.) The operation is being upgraded to offer extended hours, greater accessibility and more services—such as accepting packages for FedEx and UPS shipping, as well as digital copying. It will be open to the public, too.
This is just the latest news from Lehigh Printing and Mailing Services, an in-plant that prides itself on offering innovative services to its university. In addition to producing high-quality digital and offset printing (the shop just added a four-color Ryobi press), the in-plant has established shredding and photo printing partnerships, and runs a flourishing wide-format printing operation, cranking out some 1,700 posters a year.
Eliminating Student Mailboxes
For the new campus mail system, Strause—after working with a consultant and visiting four mail centers—decided to implement a high-density filing system for student letter mail. This would allow the facility to eliminate 5,000 campus mailboxes, which had occupied more than 6,000 square feet in the student center.
Instead, mail will be stored in expandable file folders in rolling cabinets that reside in a 10x14-foot area. The new post office will have 5,500 files to accommodate expansion. Files are divided into six sections and numbered within each section.
"When letters come in, we will rough sort to a section," Strause explains. "Each file is barcoded for a particular student."
When mail is placed in an individual folder, the sorter scans the barcode with a ring scanner, which triggers an e-mail informing the student that the letter is ready for pickup. The operation already uses an e-mail notification system for incoming packages.
"We're not going to scan the file when a pizza coupon comes in," Strause adds. "It must be legitimate first-class mail, not presort/bulk mail or a flier."
The new system is extremely efficient and effective, but also very labor intensive, according to Strause. "It wasn't our original intention, but we decided to outsource the labor component of the project," he reveals. "We bid it out, and Ricoh won."
What was once a two-person operation will now require a minimum of six full-time people staffed by Ricoh. "Our two postal employees have been offered positions with Ricoh," Strause reports. "We wanted to make sure that current staff members were taken care of."
Taking care of employees—while developing leading-edge solutions that benefit students, staff and the university itself—is nothing new for Lehigh's in-plant. In addition to the postal station, the in-plant operates two production facilities, generating up to one million impressions per month. Overall revenues are approximately $1 million.
A Sprawling Campus
Lehigh University—consisting of the Asa Packer Campus (the location of both old and new postal facilities), as well as its Mountaintop Campus and Goodman Campus—sprawls over 1,800 acres located on the top and side of a mountain. The main printing facility, a 6,000-square-foot building that houses the majority of the in-plant's 16 full-time employees, resides on the Mountaintop Campus on the outskirts of campus property.
The Mountaintop facility is home to all of the in-plant's offset presses, the majority of its digital printing systems, and a full-service bindery and mailroom. It serves as warehouse for all stock and inventory, including about 150,000 lbs. of paper, and as a terminal for three delivery vehicles.
Strause is in the process of upgrading two high-speed, black-and-white production machines to a Ricoh 1107 and Ricoh 1357. For high-quality digital color production, the plant operates a Ricoh PRO C900, and Strause plans to upgrade that unit next year. Currently, the in-plant uses a Canon imagePROGRAF 8000 for wide-format printing up to 42˝.
"When we started 14 years ago, we did one poster a month on a rarely used 50˝ Xerox," Strause recalls. "Now we're producing 1,700 posters a year." The facility also produces banners, vinyl printing and paper mounting on all kinds of board.
In addition to operating three offset presses (see sidebar), the in-plant offers comprehensive bindery and finishing services. These include GBC coil binding, saddle stitching, booklet making, three-hole punching, collating, cutting, right-angle folding, numbering and stapling. All finishing is offline.
The mailroom has two full-time staff members (with part-time assistance as needed) and is equipped to handle inserting, addressing, presorting, metering and metered mail pickup.
A second production facility is located on the school's Asa Packer Campus in the College of Business. Only about 200 square feet in size, the center operates one high-speed black-and-white copier (soon to be upgraded to a Ricoh 1107) and a small color Ricoh 2035, and offers limited binding services. It is a one-person operation, open during regular business hours for student and department work.
Design and prepress are both PC- and Mac-based, and production is based on a PDF workflow via EFI PowerPress. To receive jobs online, the in-plant had developed a homegrown work-order system that works very well, according to Strause. "We took 2,000 orders digitally last year," he reports.
Now the operation is going a step further and is in the process of installing EFI's Digital StoreFront Essential.
"We're trying to get all of our orders submitted online," Strause notes. "Digital StoreFront will also facilitate ordering of prepackaged items such as blank paper, preprinted items and blue books."
In addition, Lehigh recently began insourcing work from neighboring Moravian College.
"They can use the system for digital ordering of letterhead, envelopes and blue books, too," he adds.
Shredding Services
Strause is also working with a mobile shredding service. He collects paper from various departments and holds it in a secure, locked area until he accumulates enough for economical shredding.
"We did 40 cases in our first shred," he calculates. He's working with Ricoh to put a free shredding station in the new post office. "It will have a computer monitor that will be running identity-theft-awareness ads," Strause explains. "Students can shred unwanted mail right there versus throwing it away."
The in-plant also facilitates paper and toner recycling. "It's free to them, free to me, and keeps my name out there in front of them," Strause reasons. Document scanning is available for shredding service users, as well as for general archival purposes.
Strause is constantly striving to enhance the in-plant's services and capabilities, while cultivating and maintaining relationships with outsourcing and insourcing partners. He also prioritizes the shop's human resources.
For example, Strause was quick to reassure his print shop staff that partnering with Ricoh wouldn't jeopardize the overall in-plant operation.
"I explained that this is what we're doing and why, and that our contracts are really well written," he reports. "I said, 'Yes, we invited them to breakfast—but we still control the menu.' "
