Build Up Your Bindery

ALL IT TOOK was one awful binding job by an outside printer to make Auburn University start looking at perfect binding equipment.

“We sent 200 books to a local printer and they messed them all up,” recalls CopyCat Manager Glenda Miley, still clearly peeved at that printer for charging her anyway.

Her in-plant had to reprint all 200 books and send them elsewhere for binding—a big money loser overall. Miley realized her Auburn, Ala.-based in-plant could have saved the university lots of money if it had its own perfect binder. So one year ago, the shop installed a Duplo DB250.

“We’ve never looked back,” she proclaims. “That is now a money maker for us.”

Customers love it, she contends, and it has brought in a lot of new business.

“That’s one of the greatest decisions we’ve made,” she enthuses.

In-plants across the country are learning this same lesson. Adding bindery capabilities enables them to offer their parent organizations a new service at a lower cost, with faster turnaround and more control over quality. (Click here to see our 2007 Bindery Specifications Guide.)

Louisiana State University Graphic Services just added a Coilmaster from Spiel Associates, enabling the in-plant to do coil binding, a service it previously outsourced or did by hand.

“It should save us a lot of time and a lot of money,” remarks Director Mike Loyd.

Likewise, Sioux Valley Printing/Graphics, in Sioux Falls, S.D., added bindery equipment to bring faster service to its parent company. The 17-employee in-plant had been doing its collating by hand using volunteers.

“It was taking too long,” says Director Rach Tieszen. “So we came out of the Stone Age.”

The shop entered modern times by adding a Duplo 3000 bookletmaker/collator with two eight-bin towers. Now Sioux Valley Health Systems’ newsletters, annual reports and forms are getting done a whole lot faster, Tieszen says.

Even in-plants that have a full array of binding gear are finding it advantageous to upgrade. A year ago, St. Joseph’s University replaced its tabletop folder with a new Heidelberg B20 Stahlfolder, greatly increasing the quality of the in-plant’s work.

“Now I feel like we can do professional folding that we really couldn’t before,” says Tom Malone, production manager at the Philadelphia in-plant. “To come off our four-color press and not have really top-notch folding capabilities afterwards just seemed limited to me, so I was really happy to put that piece of equipment in.”

The IPG 2007 Bindery Specifications Guide) will help you make the right equipment choices.