In-plant Profiles

Santee Cooper is South Carolina's state-owned electric and water utility and the state's largest power producer. The ultimate source of electricity for 2 million South Carolinians, Santee Cooper is dedicated to providing low-cost, reliable and environmentally protective power and water for the benefit of all South Carolina.

Tina Gray saw the end of a lease agreement for an older Duplo saddle stitcher as an opportunity to bring more automated technology into her in-plant. Gray, print shop manager of the in-plant serving the Oklahoma Department of Human Services in Oklahoma City, decided last spring to install a four-tower Standard Horizon VAC collator system in-line with a Standard Horizon StitchLiner 5500 saddle stitching system with integrated three-knife trimming.

When the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) asked staff and students to rate the service they were getting from university departments in 2008, the results were enlightening. Both faculty and students complained about the level of service being offered in all business services and financial departments. That included UNMC's 21-employee Printing Services department.

Just before Christmas I took the train up to New York City to visit a few in-plants. I do this from time to time to remind myself what the inside of an in-plant looks like and to learn more about the situations managers are facing. So I planned a rather ambitious itinerary that would take me to four different in-plants, all around the city. One was at a television network, one at a financial services company. Another was in a hospital, and the last at a famous art museum.

It was the distinctive smell of chemicals that first enticed Clarence Porter into the printing business. "There was a print shop in my neighborhood that I would pass by as a kid," Porter recalls, "and as I walked by I could smell those chemicals and look at all the printing stuff. That was my first introduction to printing, and I was fascinated. I was probably 10 years old."

LOCATED ABOUT four miles from the state capitol building in Santa Fe, N.M., the state's Printing & Graphic Services operation has been serving New Mexico for a quarter century. For most of that time, the shop has focused on black-and-white reproduction of business cards, letterhead and forms. High-quality color work, however, was eluding it, and as the demand for this work increased, the in-plant found itself losing business.

At the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture, the decision to switch from offset to digital was a practical one. "We had a 20x28˝ Sakurai offset press and some smaller Hamadas, but we couldn’t find any press operators,” remarks Jon Flaxman, director of Printing Services for the Little Rock, Ark., school. “So we just made the decision, we are going to go totally digital.” In October, the four-employee in-plant installed a new Kodak NexPress S2500 digital color press with a fifth imaging station. So far it has exceeded Flaxman’s hopes. “We definitely now get more consistent color than we’ve ever had,” he contends.

At Metro, the transit agency serving the St. Louis region, the five-employee in-house printing and mailing facility recently executed multiple, multi-faceted initiatives that have resulted in improved quality, increased efficiency and major cost savings. The in-plant has been supporting Metro for more than 20 years, producing platform schedules, training and employee documentation/manuals, forms, business cards and stationery, newsletters and board meeting materials, among other jobs. The facility also houses a full-service mail center. Both printing and mailing functions are considered part of Metro's Office Services department.

IPG Editor Bob Neubauer recently visited four different New York City in-plants to learn about their operations.

New York was decked out for Christmas when IPG Editor Bob Neubauer went there to visit four in-plants: NBC, Metropolitan Museum of Art, AXA Equitable and the NY Presbyterian Hospital.