Digital Printing-Toner - Cut Sheet (Color)

IT STARTED in the parking lot. As he stepped out of his car one day, Greg Cooper, print shop manager for the city of Baltimore's Digital Document Division, happened to run into the city's IT director. They started talking about the checks and bills that IT was printing for the city on its Xerox 92C printers. Cooper told him, flat out, that his in-plant was better positioned to handle this work than IT, whose main focus was supposed to be computers and data.

Digital press technology has opened the door for transpromotional printing, but that doesn't make commercial printing customers—or their customers—walk through it. The promise of transpromo printing has been hampered by what is perceived as a disconnect between the databases harboring audience data, and the ability to format it in an appealing way.

Though attendance was noticeably down on the first three days of Print 09, by Monday morning it was starting to look like a trade show again. Booths were packed with attendees, and vendors were busy giving demos, trying to capitalize of the sudden resurgence of interest after a lackluster weekend. IPG spent four days at the show, and the first three...let's just say we never had any problem finding someone to talk with at vendors' booths. Perhaps the beautiful Chicago weekend weather lured many to delay their arrival. (Or maybe it was the questionable wisdom of starting a trade show on a Friday.) Whatever the reason, though, by Monday morning, attendees arrived with a vengeance, including scores of in-plants managers.

Once their digital color presses are up and running, in-plants often discover a few things they wish they had known ahead of time. We asked six managers to tell us what they learned and what they wished they had done differently.

Providing services of any kind to the Houston Independent School District means thinking big—there's simply no other way to approach the task. Educating more than 220,000 students in a 301-square-mile network of elementary, middle and high schools, HISD is the seventh-largest public school system in the nation and the largest in Texas. With an annual budget in excess of $1.6 billion and a work force of more than 28,000 full- and part-time employees, HISD is a producer and a consumer of services on a truly Texas-sized scale.

Different types of organizations tend to approach the lease-buy question from different perspectives. Businesses use a variety of tools, like computing the net present value of leasing vs. buying and picking the option that maximizes profitability. Non-profit organizations—including government agencies, colleges and universities—are not as concerned with profit, but they do need to look at the impact on operating and/or capital budgets to make financially sound decisions. In some cases, the decision is driven by organizational policy, legislative guidelines or procurement laws, so the in-plant manager has little if any choice.

Tucked inside a nondescript brick building at the edge of campus, the University of Delaware’s Graphic Communications Center has brought a lot of favorable attention to the university in recent years. The quality of its offset printing has earned the in-plant numerous awards, including two Best of Show honors in the In-Print contest. Now the 19-employee in-plant is bringing the Fighting Blue Hens into the spotlight once again by becoming one of the first in-plants to install a new Xerox iGen4 digital color press. 

RIGHT NOW, somewhere in the world, a teacher is admonishing students: "Don't copy!" But within the Bethel School District, in Spanaway, Wash., educators and staff are applauding Diane Karl for nearly 26 years of consistent, finely executed copying (and printing). As the district's print shop manager, Karl oversees graphic design, production, reproduction and print distribution services for 17 elementary schools, six junior high schools, three high schools, an alternative school for grades eight through 12, an online academy and district administration.

The University of Delaware's Graphic Communications department has installed a Xerox iGen4 digital color press and a 20-station Standard 5500 Stitchliner.

The University of Mississippi's Printing and Publishing Center uses a Kodak NexPress Digital Production Color Press with Dimensional Clear Dry Ink to print high quality materials.