Business Management - In-plant Justification

Make no mistake: you are being targeted for termination by "the Competitor." Your best weapon is the revenue you generate through insourcing. By Rustin Myers There is a scene from that old sci-fi classic "The Terminator" where Kyle Reese (the soldier protector from the future) is trying to convince the terrified Sarah Conner (mother of humanity's future deliverer) of the terrible danger she is in. Kyle yells to Sarah, "Listen. And understand. That Terminator is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until

No in-plant can thrive without a strategic plan. IPG asked one of the most successful in-plants, the Allstate Print Communication Center, to share its strategies for the years ahead. The IPG Top 50 may be taking a year off, but the in-plants on that list never rest. One of those working hardest to improve and expand its business is the Allstate Print Communication Center (APCC), which ranked number one on last December's Top 50. Allstate's Wheeling, Ill.-based operation, with 365 employees and a $110 million budget, is a technologically advanced operation with a thriving insourcing business. APCC has been recognized for its

Adding fulfillment services is a great way for an in-plant to expand, increase revenues and become more crucial to its parent organization. By C. Clint Bolte A number of surveys conducted in recent years by the National Association for Printing Leadership (NAPL) have accentuated the desire and plans among commercial printers to expand into a variety of value-added services complimentary and supplementary to their conventional print services. The most recent "NAPL Creating Value Survey" conducted April/May 2005 had 317 participants and showed the following results:

Decision makers want to know why your in-plant is taking up space. Benchmarking against similar in-plants is the only way you can answer their questions. By Mike Renn "Why are you here?" Be prepared. When uttered by upper management, this question has nothing to do with metaphysical philosophy. Decision makers want to know why your in-plant is drawing pay and taking up space in their otherwise orderly company or organization. Do you have the right answer and proof to lower the arched eyebrow of the doubtful? Proper benchmarking is the only way an in-plant manager can adequately answer this question. Besides saving your

The cost of acquiring new customers is reaching untenable proportions. Appointments with prospects are nearly impossible to obtain, print buyers seem less knowledgeable about what's required or what's important, and price too often appears to be the driving factor. Mirroring suppliers' experiences are buyers' situations. Support staff have often been radically reduced, buyer responsibilities have almost always been expanded, and written specifications of what's needed are practically non-existent. As a reflective rule of thumb, whenever

Managers can help employees improve themselves by asking them questions, not just giving them answers. by Doug Silsbee hen a child asks you for help with homework, do you tell the child the answers and do the homework for the student? Of course not! Most adults know that to do so would be to shortcut the child's learning process. Instead, we help children study by asking them questions that guide them through the problem-solving process. The objective is to help them learn to think and solve problems for themselves, not to provide them the answers. Obvious, right? So why don't we

A chargeback system can help an in-plant acquire the latest technology, improve service, grow business and secure its future. By Mike Renn Why charge back? Wouldn't time be better served selling services, justifying equipment or working on process improvement? Wouldn't an across-the-board allocation of an in-plant's operational expenses be simpler? There would be no worries about cost recovery or justifying the operation's existence. Leave chargeback to the entrepreneurs. Correct? Don't bet the shop on it. You'd lose it. Even in-house printers that currently utilize a chargeback can learn how to better leverage the benefits of this billing system. A chargeback system can

By uniting data center and in-plant printing services under one roof, organizations are discovering extreme workflow solutions. By Maggie DeWitt With today's emphasis on doing business better, faster and more cost-effectively, it was inevitable that management would see the wisdom of merging in-plant printing services with data centers. For those who have not done so already, there is good news and bad news. The bad news is, with each day that goes by, your parent organization is squandering resources, losing operating efficiency and wasting money. The good news is, the task is not as daunting as you might think, and the two departments

As offset printing gives way to high-speed digital printing, your operators may need time to adjust and accept the changes. By Erik Cagle When Georgia Perimeter College installed an HP Indigo digital color press a year ago, a special training challenge lay ahead for Barbara Lindsay, assistant director of Printing Services. Among the offset press operators who needed to learn how to use the digital device was a 65-year-old man with limited computer experience. "Other than surfing the Web, he was not a computer user," Lindsay relates. "But he was courageous enough and interested in learning a new technology. Plus, he thought it would

Making money for your organization's bottom line by insourcing can mean all the difference in whether or not your in-plant survives.