THERE ARE some pretty big in-plants in North America. To find out who they are, we surveyed our readership. Not all of the largest in-plants replied, but most of them did, allowing us to create two lists: The largest in-plants according to the number of full-time-equivalent employees. (Half of the part-time/temporary employee count was added to the full-time figure.)
For years, Carmin Cristofaro managed two separate in-plants for McGill University Health Centre (MUHC), in Montreal, Quebec. Each was located in a hospital, with about two miles separating them. When one of the hospitals started looking at the in-plant's space for clinical use, Cristofaro saw his opportunity.
TONY CAROSI caught the printing bug at an early age. Now the director of Print Operations for CVS/pharmacy, the Woonsocket, R.I.-based pharmacy, health and beauty aids giant, Carosi recalls a mandatory graphic arts class turning into a life-long love of the printing industry.
FOR 10 YEARS, copying services at Villanova University School of Law were provided by Xerox under a facilities management contract. There were, however, some strings attached. The university had to supply the toner. And students had to bring their own paper.
AFTER STARTING up an extensive digital in-plant almost three years ago, the Church of Scientology has decided to replicate this success with an even more ambitious in-house printing operation. Just a few months from now the church plans to open a new offset printing plant in Commerce, Calif., 15 minutes from downtown Los Angeles.
WHEN ZENYATTA shot from the back of the pack to the lead in the final stretch to claim her 13th straight win in last month's Lady's Secret Stakes, the thousands of fans in the stands at Santa Anita Park, in Arcadia, Calif., weren't the only ones cheering. Underneath the grandstand, with the sound of a Goss Community web press churning away behind them, the crew of Santa Anita's in-plant was crowded around a TV monitor, watching the $300,000, nail-biter of a race unfold.
Wayne Guiney, manager of Office Services at Toronto’s Ontario Power Generation Inc. (OPG), made the decision to turn his in-plant into a full digital shop in 2004. He replaced a mix of offset equipment with a pair of Xerox Nuveras, a DocuColor 5252 and two FreeFlow scanning units.
AS A CHILD, Mark Shaw dreamed of flying to the stars. And though his current role as operations specialist for National Security Technologies, LLC (NSTec) isn’t exactly the same as being an astronaut, it’s still his dream job. “It’s fascinating,” he enthuses. “It motivates me. The brilliance of the scientists there, it’s amazing.”
CHERYL BUXTON is pretty up-front about the fact that some of the equipment in her Topeka, Kan., in-plant is older than the employees who run it. In June, the director of the Division of Printing and Surplus Property for the state of Kansas replaced a 30-year-old stitcher with a state-of-the-art Muller Martini Bravo-Plus saddle stitcher with AMRYS (automatic makeready system).
Tapped to oversee an in-plant located in a college football stadium (really), Tom Tozier needed a new game plan. “When I came here [in January 2008], not only was the shop not CTP, we were farming out to a film setter. We actually bought our film from a print shop in town,” admits Tozier, director of Imaging Services at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
