In-plant Profiles

Kansas Division of Printing Topeka The Division of Printing for the State of Kansas is already a large operation—$7.3 million in sales, 83 full-time employees, three satellite locations—but Director Richard Gonzales would love to see it expand. "We've consolidated [work from in-plants in] the Departments of Health, Revenue and Human Resources, and have assumed a large portion of the work from the Department of Transportation," says Gonzales. "We visited the print shops, researched their jobs and showed them in black and white what it was actually costing them." Those hard figures helped convince the departments to pool their workloads. For example, the division's newest

Two years ago, Konica replaced the offset presses in its in-plant with digital printing and copying equipment. The operation has become a showcase for the company. Ray Embury looked around the industrial park in Windsor, Conn., where his shop and several other corporate in-plants were located, and noticed some of them shutting their doors. Determined that Konica's Printing Services wouldn't become "a dinosaur" like some of those shops, Embury began making changes. "A lot of the in-plant operations around us were closing because their work was being outsourced to other printers," says Embury, Konica's manager of office services. "We've never outsourced, but we saw

Progressive Insurance Highland Heights, Ohio True to its name, Progressive Insurance's in-plant is always on the lookout for new types of work to bring in-house and new ways to save the company money. "It's not always the obvious," remarks Jan Grega, manager of Corporate and Creative Services—like when she noticed the company was outsourcing the tipping of its plastic claims card onto a carrier sheet. The in-plant was already printing that carrier, so why not do the tipping too? "As the volume grew, we found that that was something that we could save a lot of money by bringing in-house," she says. "In

University of Missouri Columbia, Mo. Not only is University of Missouri-Columbia Printing Services the largest printer in town, it also recently became the offset printing arm of the town's local government. "The City of Columbia's in-plant closed its offset printing operation, and we set up a meeting to see if we could help them meet their printing needs," says Rick Wise, director of the university's in-plant. "The city is now a regular printing customer for us." This isn't all the in-plant has been up to, however; it's also been converting its Quick Copy operation from "off-the-glass-only" copying to digital printing with electronic access.

Unisys Plymouth, Mich. It seems only fitting that a pioneering software company like Unisys has one of the country's most cutting-edge in-plants. Having incorporated online book ordering, color management and print-on-demand (POD), Unisys' in-plant has firmly established itself as one of the leading in-plants. It's also one of the largest, with 91 employees and $16.5 million in annual sales. But again, this is only fitting for a company as vast as Unisys. "Unisys is a big company," declares Gregg Gabbana, manager of print-on-demand operations. "It has 37,000 employees and operations in 100 countries. As the company's in-plant, we do the worldwide printing and

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor The University of Michigan has a large campus, with 25,000-plus students and facilities spread throughout the city of Ann Arbor. In fact, the campus is so sprawling and decentralized that the 80-employee Auxiliary Services department receives only about 40 percent of the print and copy jobs generated. Still, last year that added up to more than 20,000 jobs and sales of $13.1 million. Print jobs ranged from business cards to high-volume, multi-color books. "There are certain jobs we'll never go after, such as casebound books," says Patricia Squires, assistant director of Auxiliary Services. "We'd never be able

Not only does Eastman Chemical Creative Services have sophisticated prepress and printing operations, it handles photography, video, streaming media, CDs—and it even insources. As the largest employer in Tennessee (with 10,000 on its payroll), Eastman Chemical has a large presence in the state, says Mike Thomas, manager of Eastman Chemical Creative Services. That presence is especially felt in eastern Tennessee, where the company's Kingsport facility is located. And it is in eastern Tennessee that this sophisticated in-plant is capitalizing on its parental relationship. By promoting its graphic arts capabilities externally, Creative Services is taking full advantage of Eastman Chemical's manufacturing fame. "The company

Despite directing one of the country's largest in-plants, George Morton tries to maintain a personal relationship with each employee. by Bob Neubauer To say George Morton is concerned about his employees is simply not saying enough. "Every day I go out into the plant. I talk to my employees. I find out how they're doing, what their ideas are, what do they think we can do better, and we listen to those things," says the 55-year-old director of the Washington State Department of Printing. And with 157 employees—110 or so of them in the main plant—that is no easy task. "It's a commitment,"

Schwab Litho San Francisco Schwab Litho, the printing arm of the financial firm Charles Schwab & Co., is a survivor. When recent company cutbacks brought the most layoffs in Schwab's 30-year history, the in-plant stayed intact—and with good reason. With the third highest sales-per-employee figure of all the in-plants on this year's Top 50, Schwab has made a spot for itself on the corporate landscape at Schwab. "Until the culture goes paper-less, I believe we have a solid future," remarks Mark Geyer, director of the in-plant. Operating on a chargeback system, Schwab Litho doesn't "officially" have an annual budget. However, as a department

State of Washington Olympia, Wash. Despite being one of the country's largest in-plants, the State of Washington's Department of Printing behaves much more like a small company in the way it treats its employees. "We're very pro-people," remarks Dan Swisher, assistant director of the Olympia, Wash.-based operation. "We like to grow from within. We like to involve everybody in our operation. And we like everybody to have fun doing it." To show employees how important they are, Swisher says the department's director, George Morton, visits each employee every single day. With 105 employees, that's a tough task, but the payoff is great. Trying