Top Five Stories of 2016

As we kick off a new year, it's interesting to look back at the most read IPG articles of 2016. It turns out that production inkjet and outsourcing are two of the topics that most interested in-plant managers last year.

The top number of views went to our announcement of Xerox's plan to split off its business process outsourcing business, an obvious topic of interest to in-plants, who are well aware of the company's history with outsourcing. (Coincidentally, Xerox finalized that split just this week.) Another outsourcing story grabbed the number four spot in page views, as managers clicked to see the fate that befell one of their peers, in hopes of learning how to avoid a similar fate.

It's no surprise that our ranking of the largest university in-plants scored well. (And we just updated that list, so you may want to check it again.) But in-plants' interest in production inkjet installations by their peers is an intriguing revelation. Stories on inkjet presses going into Texas and California in-plants generated a ton of interest.

If you missed these stories, or want to see them again, here are the links:

1. Xerox to Split in Two (Jan 29, 2016)

Xerox announced this morning that it plans to split itself into two companies: a business process outsourcing (BPO) operation and a document technology company. The BPO business will not include Xerox’s Large Enterprise Operations/Document Outsourcing (MPS) organizations, which handle document management and document outsourcing. They will be part of the Document Technology company.

2. Guess Which In-plant Is Installing a Cut-Sheet Inkjet Press (Jul 01, 2016)

At the Inkjet Summit in April, Chuck Werninger dropped hints that his in-plant was looking seriously at a cut-sheet production inkjet press. Then last month he started posting pictures of a mysterious new machine being installed in his facility, leaving his in-plant peers to make wild guesses. Few of those guesses came close to the reality of the situation, though.

3. The Largest University In-plants (Dec 09, 2016)

As our December issue was going to press, we decided to reveal some of the data we had collected for our annual ranking of the largest in-plants a little early. We presented a list of the largest university in-plants, ranked by sales and also by employees. (Incidentally, we just updated both of these lists after following up with several in-plants that didn't initially respond. The rankings have now changed, in particular the Top 10. Click the link above to see the new lists.)

4. Oops! There Goes Another In-plant (Jul 08, 2016)

Sad news out of Ohio. Administrators at Miami University, a public research university located in Oxford, have closed the university’s in-plant. The action comes on the heels of the closing of the in-plant at nearby Wright State University a couple of years ago. It turns out the WSU and Miami University shops were doing all the right things. Both were successful financially. Both offered competitive pricing. Both had a loyal following of satisfied customers. Both had a history of producing high-quality work. And yet administration didn’t see their value. What could they have done differently? Could they have been saved?

5. Church of Scientology In-plant Adds Production Inkjet Press (Apr 22, 2016)

The staff at the massive Church of Scientology International Dissemination and Distribution Center in Commerce, Calif., was facing a capacity crunch. As the church continues to expand, so do its mailing lists and printing responsibilities. In November of 2015, in response to demand, the in-plant boosted productivity by adding a new Fujifilm J Press 540W high-speed production inkjet web press to the mix.