Digital Printing-Toner - Cut Sheet (Color)

In-plants that have added digital color printing capabilities are thriving—and the call for more on-demand color work is only getting louder. By Cheryl Adams ACE Hardware certainly has a loyal customer base. "We have 6.2 million customers in our ACE Helpful Hardware Club," maintains Rick Salinas, production manager at the company's in-plant in Downers Grove, Ill. He says the club—which awards customers points, and eventually store credit, for purchases—is the "second largest customer-loyalty program in the country." The company's in-plant has played a major part in creating that loyalty, chiefly through the huge number of personalized color marketing materials it produces. In 1998

Xerox has high hopes for its new DocuTech product, built with iGen3 technology. By Bob Neubauer Recalling the way its DocuTech revolutionized black-and-white printing back in 1990, Xerox is hoping to establish another milestone with a new monochrome printer that incorporates technology used in its iGen3 digital color printer. Targeted at what it has dubbed the "mid-production" space, the new DocuTech Copier/Printer was introduced privately to journalists in Xerox's Rochester, N.Y., headquarters in December, and then unveiled formally in New York on January 29. Xerox officials could barely contain their excitement as they showed off the machine for the first time. "This

Despite the growth in color printing, black-and-white copiers still produce much of the work in today's in-plants. By W. Eric Martin With all the new and improved digital goodness popping up in these pages, it's easy to overlook the advances made in those unappreciated machines of yore: ye olde black-and-white copiers. These printing mainstays might not be the most exciting machines an in-plant manager can add to his or her arsenal, but they can't be discounted entirely because sometimes they're still the best tool for the job. What's more, today's models bear little resemblance to the faulty, all-too-easily broken machines that most people

Think your main competition is that copy center down the street? Think again. The humble desktop ink-jet or laser printer may be hurting your business even more. By Linda Formichelli Your in-plant may be quick and cost effective, but a desktop printer is...well, it's right there. It's convenient. Being able to print to a machine that's mere inches away from the computer—instead of having to walk projects over to the in-plant and then wait for them—is appealing to many customers. It's also a big waste of money. Vic Barkin, manager of Northern Arizona University Printing and Reproduction Services, tells the story of

One of the biggest challenges an in-plant can face is shifting to an all-digital workflow. But most of the time, say these managers, it's worth it. By Mike Llewellyn Over the course of his 30 years in printing, Dan Dore, operations supervisor at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), has seen it all. He was there for the rise of offset lithography. He saw the advent of digital printing. And now he's guiding his in-plant into an all-digital workflow. By the end of this year, all of the federally funded in-plant's offset equipment will be sent off to government surplus, and the shop

With high-speed, black-and-white printers designed to bear the brunt of an in-plant's workload, managers want to see how fast the machines cut costs. By Mike Llewellyn JIM ALLEN, the newly appointed manager of Printing Services at New York City's Fashion Institute of Technology, runs a pair of Océ 2600s to handle flyers, instructional packets for professors and countless other nuts-and-bolts projects that come into the in-plant every day. With black-and-white printing accounting for 85 percent of the in-plant's workload, the 2600s have become the backbone of the FIT shop. "They're definitely workhorses," says Allen. "They do almost all of the work." That's how many

Competition among the major digital color printing vendors is tougher than ever. In-plants, as luck would have it, are caught in the crossfire. by Mike Llewellyn FOR ANY large organization, if they're saying 'I need this job now,' they're going to want to send it to an in-plant," declares Abby Abhyankar, vice president for integrated marketing at Xerox. "In-plants represent short runs with fast response times and no compromises on quality." That's not news to in-plant managers, whose job it is to make sure their shops offer the highest speed at the lowest price. But it is making headlines at companies like

Back in October 2002, Canon USA released its CLC 3900 (now 3900+), a copier/printer turning out 39 pages per minute (ppm) in either color or black and white. The 3900 is a slightly-less-robust addition to a product line that includes Canon's CLC 5000, a production-level copier/printer producing 50 ppm. At the time, Mason Olds, the company's then-general manager for the color systems division, claimed, "This product has no direct competition right now." Jump to February, 2003: Xerox goes head-to-head with Canon with the release of the Xerox 3535, pushing 35 ppm in either black and white or color. Until that late-winter release, Canon

Personalized marketing materials can strengthen your organization's customer base. Here are the steps your in-plant can take to make it happen. by Danny Kita Organizations have taken great pains to collect information about their customers. But beyond an on-screen customer relationship management review prior to making a call, this information is being vastly underutilized. Why not put it to good use developing customized marketing campaigns? Such campaigns garner high interest, generate significant response rates, lower the cost per lead and pave the way to greater customer retention. A digital press is the tool, and variable data printing is the enabler. Variable data

At in-plants across the country, the digital revolution is in full swing. More than ever, managers are realizing the benefits of being able to print variable data and digital color, and many find themselves teaching their customers just how valuable this technology can be. According to IPG research, the number of in-plants using digital printing technology has risen to over 80 percent from around 60 percent in 1999, with 34 percent more work now printed digitally than four years ago. To help you wade through the wealth of digital products launched over the past year, IPG has assembled a directory of the