Thomas Lecy, supervisor of Printing Services at Indiana University–Purdue University Fort Wayne, has a plan for the student interns at his in-plant: he wants to train them well on all the aspects of the in-plant, including the new Ricoh Pro C901s his shop just acquired. That way when they graduate they will have marketable skills beyond their degree.
Matt Stringer
Until recently, when the University of Tennessee Graphic Arts Service needed to print a banner for an outdoor event, the in-plant had to outsource the work. For posters, the shop used an HP inkjet copier. But that has all changed since the Knoxville in-plant purchased a 64˝ Mutoh ValueJet 1608 Hybrid wide-format printer.
When the print shop for the City of Longmont, Colo., wanted to improve its capabilities, it didn't send out e-mails to ask what type of services customers needed. Instead, staff went out to each customer and asked what they thought the in-plant was lacking. "There was an expression of a need for a wide-format [printer],” reports Richard Showers, in-plant manager.
Wes Morgan experienced the evolution of prepress technology as he moved through the Virginia printing industry en route to his current position with Afflink Business Services.
Customers want gloss. That’s what Randall Bramlett started to notice last year. What’s more, they were going off campus to get it. This was troubling to Bramlett, manager of Printing Services at Columbus State University.
Maybe Wayne Guiney should have been a politician. At least that's what some people have said to him, because his people skills have kept the staffs he's managed at multiple in-plants on his side.
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Bloomsburg University Printing Services is a busy in-plant, printing everything from letterhead and labels to invitations, marketing brochures and programs for sporting events and concerts. The shop prints all of the Bloomsburg, Pa.-based college's materials, since there are few outside printers in this rural area. To help it in this task, the in-plant recently installed a Lanier C720s Pro color printer.
Before last July, Allegheny College Printing Services outsourced the printing of envelopes, business cards and letterheads to local commercial print shops. Then the in-plant purchased a Xanté Ilumina 502 Digital Color Press and brought the jobs back in-house. That saved money for the Meadville, Pa.-based college. But something else happened too: the in-plant started insourcing jobs from the companies it used to outsource to, bringing in revenue for the college.
"I learned how to run the Ludlows and then offset," says Rodney Brown, referring to a stint working on a Ludlow hot metal typesetting system at Kent County Publishing back in May 1965. "It was rigorous to do. I just liked it. Even back then, there was always something new."
Dan Dore was tired of the waste he saw coming out of the old digital duplicator that his in-plant used to print envelopes. So after reading about the Xanté Illumina Digital Production Press GT in early 2010, Dore, Printing Services Section supervisor at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Labratory, sent two employees to the On Demand show in Philadelphia to check it out.
One large digital press in an in-plant is impressive. Two of them in the same shop is remarkable. But three is extraordinary. So when Medifast, a clinically proven, portion-controlled weight-loss program, installed a third Xerox iGen4 in its Ridgely, Md.-based in-plant in January, the in-plant entered the realm of the exceptional.
