In-plant Profiles

MIKE SCHRADER, his wife, Deb, and their two sons—Rob, 13, and Pete, 11—reside in a small town halfway between the Green Bay Packers and the Milwaukee Brewers. Schrader was born and raised here, in Berlin, Wis., just northwest of the Fond du Lac headquarters of Mercury Marine, where he is manager of Printing & Mailing Solutions. As far back as he can recall Schrader had an interest in graphics and drawing. While in high school, he painted signs and vehicles for local businesses. He went on to receive an Associate Degree in Commercial Art in 1984 from Western Wisconsin Technical College, in LaCrosse, Wis.,

WHEN THE Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center’s in-plant moved into the computer-to-plate world in 2000 by installing an ITEK 2430 polyester platemaker, everything changed at the eight-employee shop. “Moving to CTP was a dramatic change for us and improved our productivity significantly,” says Dale Travitz, group leader. The platesetter produced plates for the shop’s four presses: a two-color Heidelberg, an A.B.Dick T51, a Multigraphics 1250 with a T-head, and a Davidson perfector. Those presses printed the majority of the Hershey Medical Center’s materials—everything from brochures and flyers to newsletters and forms. “But as demand for four-color printing continued to climb,

In the latest IPG video, Mike Renn, assistant vice president of core services at Mellon Financial, in Philadelphia, relates how his in-plant’s new Presstek Vector TX52 platesetter is saving the company money: “We don’t need chemistry with this, so we save $10,000 a year just in chemistry costs,” Renn says on the video. “Just add water and that’s all you have to do to it.” The video tour also covers the seven-employee in-plant’s Ryobi press, Xerox 6060, Xerox Nuvera 120 and other equipment. To see it all, go to www.ipgonline.com/video/ipg_mfcp.html

Dominion, a Richmond, Va.-based energy company, has installed an eight-color, 23x29˝ Ryobi 758 press in its in-plant. It is the first eight-color Ryobi press installed in the United States, and it joins a four-up, 20x27˝ Ryobi 684 and a two-up Ryobi 3302 press. The shop, which has a $2 million budget, handles all color billing inserts, plus brochures, posters, annual reports and calendars—as well as pro bono work for Dominion’s philanthropic partners. The eight-color press is expected to bring more than $500,000 in annual savings because its six-up format allows for fewer overall impressions and the UV dryer eliminates drying time.

BRIAN CHEPREN, supervisor of Central Printing Services at Pinellas County Schools, is a fixture in the Florida printing business. His father was a lithographer who taught his son the trade, and Chepren began working in his dad’s business when he was just 12 years old. He worked weekends and summers until he went to Eckerd College where he earned a BA in business administration. Chepren went back to printing even after college; in 1969 he secured a position in the blueprints department at ECI, a defense contractor now called Raytheon. He then moved into the offset area and ultimately found himself supervising a

HERE’S A nightmare that no manager wants to face: Being hired to run an in-plant only to have your boss decide to outsource the whole shebang six months later. After being hired in August 1996 as manager of Printing Services for BlueCross BlueShield (BCBS) of South Carolina, John Fabian awoke to find his dream job turning scary. “They hired me because the former manager was retiring,” he says. “Work had been slow to get to the customer, and I had a digital background in addition to offset know

TONYA DEMERSON follows a simple path to success: She takes the opportunities given her, excels and earns more opportunities. Throughout her brilliant career this cycle has repeated itself, and it continues to pay off. At April’s IPMA conference, Demerson received the James M. Brahney scholarship, awarded annually to an IPMA member who is pursuing a degree in corporate publishing or management. Demerson, Reprographics manager for the City of Denton, Texas, took a unique road to her career in printing. Born in Queens, N.Y., raised in Amarillo, Texas, Demerson originally arrived in Denton to attend the University of North Texas as a psychology

EVEN THOUGH his in-plant won an impressive 10 awards in this year’s In-Print contest, Rodney Brown was not prepared to hear his shop’s name called out as the Best of Show winner during the recent awards ceremony. “I was totally surprised,” says Brown, manager of the Graphic Communications Center at the University of Delaware. “It just gets harder every year because of the quality that all the rest of the in-plants are putting out.” The piece that caught the judges’ attention was a case-bound 160-page cookbook featuring recipes from Vita Nova, the University of Delaware’s student-run restaurant, and illustrated with color photos of

Boyd Cranford knew the quality of his in-plant’s work would likely increase once it installed the new four-up Kodak Magnus 400S platesetter. But it wasn’t until the shop reprinted a job it had done last year using plates from the Magnus that he saw the improvement with his own eyes. “The difference was just amazing,” enthuses Cranford, manager of Printing Services at Memorial University of Newfoundland, in St. John’s. The customer, he adds, was “ecstatic with the change. The image is just so much clearer, being first generation.” The 28-employee in-plant opted to use Kodak chemistry-free plates with the four-up CTP system, becoming one of the

RISING FROM the barren desert along the north shore of the Great Salt Lake, Vic Conrad’s in-plant boasts one of the country’s most desolate locations. “I look out my window and I see mountains and fields and desert,” says Conrad, manager of Publications/Media Support at ATK Launch Systems Group. His 53-employee operation in the basement of the ATK administration building is part of a sprawling complex of manufacturing facilities spread over a 20-mile area near Promontory, Utah. The main plant itself covers about 19,000 acres. “We have our own water supply and electricity and cafeterias,” he adds. “There’s nothing here, just us.”