When an effort to outsource printing threatened Mercury Marine’s in-plant, Mike Schrader Took Action

By Bob Neubauer

Calculate Your True Costs

Having successfully shown the value and cost-effectiveness of his in-plant, Mike Schrader cautions other in-plant managers not to use the wrong figures when making their case.

“When you’re comparing yourself to other companies, you can’t use the cost that you charge out,” he says. “You have to really figure out what the actual cost is.”

Take the total relevant expenses for a year and divide them by the total annual impressions to give you a true impression cost, he says. Then use that number when calculating your cost for each job. But make sure you use only the relevant expenses. In his case, he says, he removed the expenses involving his mailing operation, since they had no impact on printing costs.

“Make sure you outline what costs would still need to be incurred even if the printing department would go away, like retaining someone to manage all the outsourcing,” he adds.

Also, if your in-plant performs tasks that are more difficult to outsource, point that out. And be sure to include additional costs that would be incurred when printing outside, like tax, shipping costs and rush charges.

It's every in-plant manager's worse fear. You put in a request for new equipment, then find out your upper management is planning to outsource you.

That was the situation Mike Schrader found himself in two years ago. His in-plant at Mercury Marine, a leading manufacturer of recreational marine propulsion engines, had just completed a request for proposal (RFP) to upgrade its digital equipment. Instead of the approval he expected, though, Schrader learned that Mercury's parent company, Brunswick Corp., had assembled a team with the mission of outsourcing the printing for all Brunswick companies to a single source.

In-plant Snapshot

Brunswick Print Solutions
Fond du Lac, Wisc.
10 employees

Key Equipment:
• Xerox iGen4 with C.P. Bourg BCM-X and BDF-X
• Xerox DocuTech 6180 with high-capacity stacker
• Xerox Nuvera 200 with C.P. Bourg Power Square 200
• A.B.Dick 9810

• C.P. Bourg BST4 saddle stitcher/collator
• C.P. Bourg 3002 single phase perfect binder
• Stahl KB-52 folder
• Baumfolder 714 folder
• Challenge MS-5 drill
• Polar Paper cutter
• Challenge double cornering machine
• Rhino Tuff HD6500 Wire-O binder
• Clamco semi-automatic shrink packaging system
• Ledco Educator 25˝ roll laminator
• Microboards Copy Writer DVD 1016 Premium Pro
• Microboards Print Factory 2
• Xerox FreeFlow Makeready software
• Xerox Process Manager software
• Xerox Web Services software
• Avanti Print Management software
• P3 Expeditor print procurement software

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Bob Neubauer Author's page

Bob has served as editor of In-plant Impressions since October of 1994. Prior to that he served for three years as managing editor of Printing Impressions, a commercial printing publication. Mr. Neubauer is very active in the U.S. in-plant industry. He attends all the major in-plant conferences and has visited more than 180 in-plant operations around the world. He has given presentations to numerous in-plant groups in the U.S., Canada and Australia, including the Association of College and University Printers and the In-plant Printing and Mailing Association. He also coordinates the annual In-Print contest, co-sponsored by IPMA and In-plant Impressions.

An In-plant Victory