In-plant Profiles

Lehigh University Printing and Mailing Services just installed a Ricoh Pro C900 color production system. It is being used to produce a variety of posters, flyers and postcards for the university, as well as signage, playbooks, parking passes and more for the Philadelphia Eagles training camp.

IT'S CONFERENCE season again, which means that in between writing and editing articles for this issue, I've been dashing off to in-plant events around the country. In the past two weeks I've been to two in-plant meetings (plus the On Demand Show) and talked with dozens of managers about what's happening in their shops.

AT AGE 13, Jim Sabulski was already looking for a job. “I set out to work because I liked being able to buy what I wanted,” declares Sabulski, now manager of Print and Mail Services for Misericordia University, in Dallas, Pa. “I didn’t like having to ask my parents for money.”

It's every in-plant manager's worse fear. You put in a request for new equipment, then find out your upper management is planning to outsource you. That was the situation Mike Schrader found himself in two years ago. His in-plant at Mercury Marine, a leading manufacturer of recreational marine propulsion engines, had just completed a request for proposal (RFP) to upgrade its digital equipment.

WHEN MARK Dixon inherited the lead role at the University of Oregon's Printing and Mailing Services in December from long-time Director J.R. Gaddis, he started by taking a back-to-basics approach and stamping it with his own progressive twist.

ANY IN-PLANT manager who has attended the Association of College and University Printers (ACUP) conference in the past 12 years, has certainly heard the Scottish brogue of Andrew Scott ringing through the air.

University of North Texas Print & Mail Services is one of the most quality-conscious in-plants in the country. Since 2004, the in-plant has won an impressive 38 In-Print awards, earning it great respect across the 36,000-student university.

During the Winter Olympics in February, Simon Fraser University Document Solutions, in Burnaby, British Columbia, successfully produced a daily 12-page color newsletter detailing the progress of the German Olympics team. The 15-employee in-plant used its Xerox iGen3 to produce 1,600 newsletters a day for 16 days, binding them on its C.P. Bourg BME booklet maker. Digital files were sent from Germany using the in-plant’s WebCRD job submission system, from Rochester Software Associates.

A school located in the southeastern part of the Evergreen State might be expected to maintain a green state of mind. So, it's not surprising that the Washington State University Publishing office has established its own sustainability program, which promotes responsible usage of paper and other printing resources.

Joe Tucker likes telling the story of his first press check, back when he was handling print procurement for the state of Ohio. A state motorcycle map was on press, and he and some others were inspecting a press sheet when he spotted a little problem. "The word 'motorcycle' was misspelled," says Tucker, now state printing administrator.