Digital Printing-Toner - Cut Sheet (Color)

Since the purchase of a Konica Minolta bizhub C500 press five years ago, Jeff Davis, in-plant coordinator at Southwest Tennessee Community College, has been impressed with the quality of the machine. So when he decided to boost his in-plant's finishing capabilities, he went with two bizhub C6000 presses.

The addition of a new Konica Minolta bizhub PRESS C7000 last September has made all the difference to the in-plant at Iowa Bankers Association in Johnston, Iowa. As the in-plant's volume began to increase, Todd Palmer, printing coordinator, realized that sharing a four-color Canon imageRUNNER press with the rest of the staff at the company was no longer going to cut it.

Over the past couple of years, there has been a noticeable increase in envelope printing at in-plants. The trend has been enabled by the availability of small digital envelope presses from companies like Xanté, PSI Engineering, Intoprint Technologies and OKI Data Americas. All of the devices use the same OKI print engine but offer different feeding options. These devices hit the market just as many in-plants' old offset duplicators were breaking down and their operators started retiring.

Dozens of government and higher-ed printers met in Washington, D.C., for the INTERQUEST Digital Printing in Government and Higher Education Forum.

The Mail and Print Services department at Barnard College in New York City, has had a long-standing affair with Konica Minolta equipment. That's why when the time came to add a new digital press, it was an easy choice for director Alan Anderson, who chose a Konica Minolta C7000 digital press.

WHEN GARRY Boytos arrived at the University of Texas Health Science Center's in-plant (UT Print) in 2008, he faced a challenging situation. Boytos knew that to effectively compete with outside vendors, UT Print would have to make a lot of improvements.

In the summer of 2010, Leslie Rutledge moved from her position at San Diego State University, where she was manager of ReproGraphics, to head up the Graphic Services department at Brown University, in Providence, R.I. "Prior to my arrival, the university had undergone a reorganization, which had to be completed by June 30th," Rutledge says. Targeting redundancy, the university was combining administrative services to achieve greater efficiencies.

With the retirement of his offset pressman last August, Mike Ford, Print Services manager at Kilgore College in Kilgore, Texas, decided to retire his offset presses as well. “We are going through some really tough financial times here in Texas with our higher education system, and when my pressman told me that he was retiring, I knew that we would not be able to replace him,” Ford points out. “There are just not a lot of offset pressmen or bindery operators in this area.”

With just a two-color offset press and a Xerox DocuColor 2045 for producing color work, University of Regina Printing Services was outsourcing a lot of jobs. But after installing a Kodak NexPress 2500 SE digital press, the in-plant started printing that work in-house.

JUDGING BY the number of in-plant managers walking the Graph Expo show floor last month, there are quite a few in-plants itching to leave the recession behind and get busy adding equipment. The show gave them plenty to ogle, too, particularly in the inkjet arena.