University of California-Davis Installs Digital Press

With 42 employees, the University of California-Davis Repro Graphics is one of the country’s larger in-plants. Its Heidelberg presses churn out high volumes of flyers, forms, newsletters, surveys and more for the university, which lies just west of Sacramento.

When it came to digital color, though, the in-plant has been mostly sending those jobs to outside printers—until now.

“Our volume was continuing to climb, and it was getting to the point where we realized that we needed to make that next jump, which is going to a digital press,” notes Ed Dunn, client service and business development manager.

The press the in-plant chose was a six-color HP Indigo 5500.

“Overall, it’s a great piece of equipment,” Dunn enthuses. “We’re happy with it.”

He especially likes its six-color capabilities, which enable it to print the university’s gold and blue colors.

Once the 5500 was installed in September, it didn’t take long for the requests to start pouring in. UC-Davis is celebrating its centennial this year, so departments have been ordering posters, booklets and other items for centennial celebrations.

Dunn says most of the work being produced on the 5500 was work that was previously outsourced. The press has won the in-plant at least one new customer already, he adds. The graduate school had been printing shells via offset and storing them in an offsite warehouse.

“We presented to them the fact that they no longer really had to do this. We can do on-demand printing for them,” Dunn says. Though the grad school was hesitant, it eventually embraced the idea as a way to save storage and transportation costs.

“Now they see the power and the versatility of this equipment,” he says.

The in-plant—which recently received chain-of-custody certification from both FSC and SFI—had looked into digital equipment from Xerox, Kodak and HP. Staff visited nearby in-plants using their presses. All three vendors had their strengths, Dunn says, but the acquisition was handled by the procurement department through a bid process using a point value system.

“We really liked the quality on the Indigo, but didn’t know how that was going to compete price-wise,” he says.

Repro Graphics had been setting money aside for this purchase, but during the bid process it got a scare when the university put everything on hold. With budgets being cut everywhere, the in-plant was worried the administration would find another use for its funds.

“Fortunately, we had some high-up administrators that had been backing us from day one, and they went to bat for us, and so we were able to proceed,” Dunn recounts.

Now that the digital press is installed, clients, like the admissions office, are looking into using its variable data printing capabilities for target marketing. For now, though, the press’ speed and quality are what customers are most excited about.

“The speed of this is phenomenal. It has improved our productivity,” Dunn enthuses. “It’s fantastic. We just absolutely love it.”

The in-plant has also installed two wide-format printers and a laminator to support its booming poster-printing business. It added an HP Designjet 9000S and a Designjet Z6100, along with a Seal Image 62 Plus laminator.

In other news, Interim Director Brian Wadell was recently appointed the new director of Repro Graphics. Prior to joining Repro Graphics in June 2007, Wadell was senior vice president, campus services, with Sodexho, a food and facilities management provider.

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