In-plant Profiles

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

Variable data printing is a popular topic in Texas. “I get a lot of people who will call me and ask me questions about variable data printing,” remarks Steve Burdette, director of Campus Support Services at the University of Texas at Arlington. The in-plant has been providing personalized monochrome printing on its Kodak Digimasters, while outsourcing color variable print jobs to the University of North Texas, which runs an HP Indigo 3000. That has all changed now. The 25-employee in-plant just installed a new Kodak NexPress 2100 plus digital production color press with a NexGlosser glossing unit. Burdette plans to increase the shop’s variable data printing work, while

When the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine (PCOM) added a Screen PlateRite 4000 to its in-plant seven years ago, it was happy to leave film behind and enter the computer-to-plate world. That world, though, was not entirely problem free. “It was starting to get expensive to eliminate the chemicals,” remarks Dean Gray, director of Materials Management. Plus, having to handle hazardous waste did not exactly make the in-plant an environmentally friendly place. The in-plant recently tackled this issue head-on by switching to chemistry-free Agfa :Azura plates. A new :Azura C85 processor has been installed, and the shop made an almost seamless transition to the new plates.

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.”

A FORMER music major, Jane Bloodworth was working as an outside salesperson at an office supply company when fate intervened. A friend who owned an advertising agency asked her to volunteer as a coordinator on a large dairy industry kitting project. “He was impressed with my abilities and ended up hiring me,” recalls Bloodworth, business manager for the World Bank’s Printing, Graphics and Map Design unit in Washington, D.C. “It was a small agency, and I had an opportunity to do everything from writing and editing to production management and press approvals.” Bloodworth went on to become the director of travel

ABBAS BADANI is not afraid to be blunt when talking about his in-plant’s past performance. “There’s no question that the way it was, wasn’t really working,” says Badani, director of Pennsylvania State University’s Multimedia & Print Center (MPC), in University Park, Pa. In short, up until a few years ago, the in-plant was still staffed and equipped for 1970s-level production. It was losing business, expenses were rising, and most of the campus viewed it as merely another vendor, not as a core part of the university. “We were very stagnant, I think, for a while,” notes Mike Poorman, assistant director, who has been

WASHINGTON--The Government Printing Office celebrated the 70th birthday of the Federal Register last week, serving birthday cake at the government building where the Register has been printed every federal workday since March 14, 1936. The Federal Register chronicles all federal rules and regulations. The first issue held 16 pages; Tuesday’s 70th anniversary edition had 256. The largest single document ever published in the Federal Register was the 6,653-page antitrust settlement between the Justice Department and Microsoft Corp. on May, 3, 2002, according to an Associated Press article. Public Printer Bruce James was recently asked by Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) whether privatization could bring more cost savings

The largest, most successful company in the country also maintains one of the most sizable in-plants, with a staff that's willing to bend over backwards to keep Wal-Mart on top. By Carol Brzozowski ASK DANNY Funkhouser, the general manager of Wal-Mart's Print and Mail Distribution Center (PMDC), what role his in-plant plays in the success of the country's leading retailer, and he replies: "benchmarking." By being competitive in pricing and speed, Funkhouser explains, the in-plant keeps its competition in line. "We typically get bids that are not inflated since most printing firms are aware that Wal-Mart has an in-plant operation," he says. "PMDC's

CTP has revamped the prepress department at brokerage firm A.G. Edwards. By Bob Neubauer WHEN A.G. Edwards' print shop fired up its new Presstek Dimension 400 and Mitsubishi Silver DigiPlate computer-to-plate systems in the spring of 2004, it was a monumental change for the St. Louis-based operation. Up until then, the 35-employee shop had been using its camera to shoot film. "We knew from an efficiency standpoint that [CTP] was where we needed to be," says Sue Weiss, vice president of General Services. This was never more apparent than when the in-plant tackled one of its most cumbersome jobs, a directory of company