In-plant Profiles

As a research and marketing firm for life insurance and financial organizations, LIMRA International hosts quite a few conferences—more than 20 a year. When it needs conference brochures and programs, the Windsor, Conn.-based company naturally turns to its in-plant. But printing isn’t this in-plant’s only skill. Called Business Services, the 13-employee operation also provides multimedia services: photography, video recording/editing, PowerPoint support and CD/DVD creation. So for each of LIMRA’s conferences, the in-plant may check speakers’ PowerPoints and fix problems, put those presentations on CD, videotape the sessions, edit them, add music, burn them onto DVDs, print labels and accompanying brochures and mail them. When

Though it has just seven employees, Northeast Wisconsin Technical College Printing Services installed a new HP Indigo 3050 digital press last August. How? By agreeing to use it for both academic and production purposes. “The educational tie-in was the primary reason we got this press,” testifies John M. Reinders, applied print technology instructor. “It was purchased by our academic program with the understanding that we would use the press. Without this connection with our printing program we would not have this device on our floor.” When the press isn’t being used to prepare students for digital print careers, it is busy producing full-color printing for the

The U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) has implemented Avanti’s Print MIS software to manage its Washington, D.C.-based printing operation.  “Avanti has a great deal of expertise in helping government print facilities streamline their workflow and provide added value to their customers,” says Patrick Bolan, president and CEO of Avanti Computer Systems. “We are excited to be involved in helping the GPO take their operation to the next level.”  The U.S. Government Printing Office is the Federal Government’s primary centralized resource for gathering, cataloging, producing, providing, authenticating, and preserving published U.S. Government information in all its forms. GPO is responsible for the production and distribution of hundreds

SOMETIMES IT seems I’m chained to this desk, “observing” the industry through e-mails and Web sites. So I like to break away now and then to see for myself what’s happening in the world’s in-plants. Recently I caught a train up to New York to do just that. On a frigid winter day I walked through a sea of scarves and hats to the United Nations’ headquarters to visit one of the largest in-plants out there. Paul Kazarov, chief of the Publishing Section, took me for a walk through the U.N.’s vast underground in-plant, filled with just about every type of printing and binding

AS MANAGER of UCSD Imprints, the 14-employee in-plant for the University of California-San Diego, Larry Fox has spent the past 12 years expanding and digitizing his operation to better serve the university’s 21,000 students and 20,000 faculty and staff. The university has taken notice. For the past five years, the in-plant has been awarded the Business Affairs Customer Satisfaction award for its copier management and printing services. Born and raised in eastern Colorado, Fox attended Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Okla. He earned a degree in Theology with a Biblical Studies major and a minor in German. After college, he spent a

SAN DIEGO State University is an academically rich, urban university with more than 34,000 students, award-winning professors, top-notch research facilities and a location that serves as the gateway to Latin America. Like most universities—especially in California—SDSU is also very conscious of its environmental footprint and constantly monitors and works to reduce its impact on the environment. In April of 2005, the university hired Leslie Rutledge to transform its in-plant, ReproGraphic Services. Her years of employment with commercial printers and graphic arts vendors made her the right person for the challenge. “When I walked in the door on April 4, 2005, which is one

FEW IN-PLANTS have embraced on-demand printing like ASG Central Operations, in Naples, Fla. That’s because, unlike most in-plants—dragged into print-on-demand from the traditional long-run world—ASG Central Operations was created as a 100 percent digital, on-demand operation by its parent, ASG Software Solutions. In its eight and a half years of existence, Central Operations has produced, packaged and shipped countless technical documents for ASG’s 150+ software products, as well as marketing and training collateral for the company’s 900 employees in 65 offices around the world. To handle all this volume, the in-plant utilizes nine employees in four facilities, located on both coasts and in

Even as its new Presstek 52DI direct imaging press brings World Bank Printing Services into the short-run four-color offset market, the busy in-plant is expanding its digital printing business with the addition of Océ and Kodak equipment. The new capabilities, all added within the past six months, have caused a reshuffling of work inside the 41-employee Washington, D.C.-based operation. The July addition of a two-color Océ 9220 roll-fed printer allowed the in-plant to move black-and-white book text and other short-run web jobs off of its web presses. At the same time, longer-run book pages were transferred to the 9220 from the shop’s cut-sheet digital

IF AN in-plant’s success is measured by its growth, Auburn University’s CopyCat operation is a big winner. Much of this can be attributed to Glenda Miley, who has grown the shop into a full-service, state-of-the-art facility in her 13 years there. “Every year we have done better than the year before,” she attests. “We are always innovative, never stagnant. We stay on the cutting edge.” Born in Montgomery, Ala., and raised in that area, Miley started her graphic arts career while still in high school. She worked summers as a copyreader with Books Inc., a company that turned hardcover books into paperbacks. After studying

EVERY IN-PLANT strives to be an asset to its parent organization. Spartan Stores’ Graphic Services department takes this even further. The in-plant’s 82 “associates” work tirelessly to give their parent company a strategic advantage over the competition in the wholesale and retail food distribution business. And what is this strategic advantage? Well, versatility for one. The in-plant provides so many services it can meet virtually any demand. It can take a job from design through fulfillment, while offering excellent customer service. Convenience and fast turnaround are other strategic advantages. The 36,000-square-foot in-plant is housed right at the Spartan Stores corporate office in Byron Center,