Business Management - In-plant Justification

Things were going well for Larry Mills. Volumes were way up at his in-plant at Regional Health, in Rapid City, S.D.; company executives had toured his shop and were very impressed; and Printing Services was scheduled to move into a nice new facility—once all the paperwork was signed.

You know your in-plant provides a valuable, cost-saving service for your organization. But that won’t stop management from questioning the benefit of retaining you when budgets are tight. To help you prove your value in these difficult times, In-plant Graphics is hosting a 60-minute webinar on March 27, that will will feature advice from three in-plant experts

In-plants have introduced scores of new services in just the past two years, ranging from new types of printed products, like vehicle wraps, foil security printing, magnets and envelopes, to data management services, such as mail list cleansing, transactional scanning and records management.

It was exactly a year ago that the drama began for Jack Williams. That's when the board of trustees at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, issued a directive to begin soliciting proposals from outside vendors for the possible outsourcing of his Graphic Arts Services operation.

One approach during the tough economic times we live in is to stick our heads in the sand, and wish all of this would just go away. I suggest there is a better approach: meet the tough times head on and be proactive.

A change that has been occurring and will continue to do so is optimizing processes. The job shop mentality is being replaced with concepts like Lean Manufacturing and process workflow. While many companies have claimed to become more efficient, the truth is, printing still has a long way to go to match that of the electronics and automobile industries, to name a couple.

NAPL Senior Consultant Howard Fenton takes a look at industry trends, including what we saw at October's Graph Expo 2012: the unrelenting drive to reduce costs, the importance of keeping your customers happy, and a renewed focus from industry leaders on strategic planning.

If you’re looking for a benchmark to evaluate your performance, we suggest that you continuously benchmark your pricing against the prices charged by available commercial alternatives. You are not competing with other in-plants; you are competing with the print shops that operate in your area.

It was hard for in-plant managers not to feel special at Graph Expo this year. After years of being included seemingly as an afterthought, in-plants were given the spotlight this time around, with numerous sessions focusing specifically on in-plant issues and a new networking hub called "The InPlant Place" where they could gather and mingle. Some vendors set aside special areas devoted to solutions for in-plants, and one (Rochester Software Associates) offered daily in-plant networking receptions.

Ever since a highly respected IT research and advisory think tank published a study several years ago in which it opined that 1 to 3 percent of an organization's revenue was spent on printing and printing-related costs, managers and administrators have been trying to figure out how to optimize their spend on document printing solutions. You've all seen the hype.