In-plant Profiles

There aren’t too many private athletic clubs that have their own in-plants. But for nearly 17 years now, John Ashby has been serving as the one-man print shop for the Washington Athletic Club, a 17,840-member club in downtown Seattle. Using a two-color Ryobi 512, he produces more than a million impressions a year, handling about 80 percent of WAC’s printing. This includes four-color jobs, like the 28-page “menu of services” he recently printed. He single-handedly cranked out 2,500 of the 4x5.5˝ pieces, each with an 80-lb. cover. “That job took me a little while,” he recalls. Ashby prints three membership mailings a

Sometimes you can’t get money for upgrades no matter how badly you need them—and sometimes you get a license to spend. Rocky Reynolds, reprographics supervisor at the Citrus College in-plant in Glendora, Calif., says he kept hearing requests from higher-ups for a more professional and business-oriented look to all of the campus’ publications, even for flyers and brochures. “We were sending a lot of work off-campus to get that look, even with a Xerox 2060 for color work,” he says. After investigating available digital presses, the in-plant, which has just three full-time and two part-time employees, installed a Xerox iGen3. “We’re

Deliveries from the Visual Communications department at Lake Forest College, in Illinois, are handled in style, thanks to the vintage 1964 golf cart that the department purchased two years ago. “We had nothing but hand trucks to make deliveries,” says Leslie Taylor, director. “We’re trying to have more of a presence on campus. In the hood of the cart is a cooler, so when we deliver in the summer, we offer cold pop or water to whoever’s getting the job.” As part of its outreach program, the Visual Communications department—which is located in a large building that once served as a dog kennel—has

The in-plant for the Bethel, Wash., public school system turned out more than 44.6 million impressions in 2006, most of them in the form of booklets. “We average between 20-25,000 booklets a day,” reports Diane Karl, print shop manager. The in-plant initially adopted the booklet format in order to help students. “If students can do their general work in the same fashion as the tests they have to take for an assessment of scholastic learning, they’ll be more proficient when they take the tests,” says Karl. “It’s cost effective for us to make the booklets and easy for our students to use.

WHEN SOUTHERN Illinois University Printing/Duplicating Service installed a new Screen FT 3050 imagesetter in 1998, it was a big step forward. Gone were the days of shooting film. After nine years, though, time took its toll on the FT 3050. “It was a good machine. We were happy with it,” remarks Dennis Maze, superintendent of the 22-employee operation, in Carbondale, Ill. “But we had some problems with it a little over a year ago.” Error messages and the need for parts left the machine out of commission for days at a time—once for a full week. “So that’s when we decided to start

In early 2005, the in-plant at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland, Ohio, underwent a radical reorganization due to the adoption of “5S,” a Japanese system for maintaining a healthy work environment. The shop removed dozens of dumpsters of unneeded materials, painted and repaired the workspace, then organized the equipment efficiently and placed visual aids everywhere. In-plant manager Warren Hauser says the adoption of 5S “completely redesigned the shop. We now have a much more streamlined and logical way of doing business.” The shop plans to bring in a Xerox 8000 digital press soon, which will require layout changes. The most recent addition to

FOR ALVIN Griffin, director of Graphic Production for North Carolina’s Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District, and proud owner of a new Xerox iGen3 digital press, a K-12 in-plant stays in the good graces of the superintendent for one primary reason. “We’re dedicated to their needs,” he says. “We provide the support documents for the teachers and the administration. We provide documents used by the students. Ultimately, our goals are aligned with the goals of everyone else in the organization: Education.” Keeping aligned with the goals of the organization became especially important with the arrival of a new superintendent, Peter Gorman. After 100 days at the helm

DAN STRODTMAN was 12 years old and living in Joliet, Ill., during the late ’60s when he began helping the next door neighbor, who ran a part-time printing business out of his garage. Fascinated with the old letterpress and other tools of the trade, Strodtman learned the California job case—a drawer with compartments that held lead type for letterpress printing—and soon was assisting with setting up and running business cards and forms. “From that time on, I have always been a printer,” says Strodtman, director of Printing Services at Valley View School District, in Romeoville, Ill. Graphic arts courses in high school

Steve Goodman, director of Campus Services at the University of Illinois at Springfield, has died of cancer. He was 58. Well known among attendees of the Association of College and University Printers (ACUP) conference, Mr. Goodman took the UIS position in April 2001 after spending 15 years as manager of print and mail services at California State University in Fresno. When asked, in a 2001 interview, why he chose to stay in the in-plant industry rather than move to the commercial sector, he remarked, “The in-plant allows you to actively work with an organization and help an organization grow.” And that’s exactly what he strived to

When University of Alaska-Fairbanks Printing Services added its new Agfa :Acento II E thermal computer-to-plate device in the fall, it arranged to keep its Agfa SelectSet 7000 imagesetter around for three months, just in case the transition from film to CTP didn’t go well. “We never turned it on again once we had that platesetter installed,” reports Warren Fraser, manager of Printing Services. Nor has the in-plant looked back fondly even once on the film world it left behind. For one thing, the new platesetter has reduced dot gain and improved quality: “It’s rare that a plate gets rejected,” Fraser testifies. “It’s been really good.” For