In-plant Profiles

Dwight Loeding has rebuilt Orlando Regional Healthcare System's in-plant into an efficient, service-oriented success. When most people go to Florida on vacation they come home with a tan. Dwight Loeding came home with a new job. In 1990 he and his wife were enjoying the Florida sunshine on vacation from their home in Michigan when they noticed an ad in the Orlando Sentinel. The Orlando Regional Healthcare System needed someone to overhaul its faltering in-plant. Armed with some high school printing experience and a business administration degree, Loeding decided to check it out. Clad in his vacation shorts, he interviewed for the position.

This month IPG talks to Larry Williams, at Fireman's Fund, who entered the printing industry by chance and has loved it ever since. Fresh out of Sonoma State University, armed with degrees in geography and business management, Larry Williams had no idea what he was getting himself into when he walked into a copy shop back in 1979. "I went into a print shop to get my resume printed," Williams recalls. "They had a typesetting machine but they didn't have a typesetter, and I said, 'well, I need a job. If you give me the manual I can learn how to run that machine.'

Healthcare in-plants face the unique task of serving both the medical field and the patients that are being treated. In-plants serving the healthcare industry are responsible for more than just paper and ink; it is an industry with a definite human side to it. "We are dealing with life. We cannot afford to have a lot of mistakes made," explains Margie Penkala, team leader of the graphic arts/mailroom department at St. Helena Hospital, in Deer Park, Calif. While Penkala oversees just four part-time employees in the hospital in-plant, she understands the large responsibility her department is taking on. "The forms have got to

In the first of our in-plant manager profiles, we talk to Jim Puppe, supervisor of the prize-winning Minnkota Power Cooperative print shop. In Jim Puppe's mind, the beaches and sunshine of Los Angeles pale against the crisp country air of North Dakota. So after spending seven years perfecting his press skills in the City of Angels, Puppe and his wife packed up and headed back home. That was more than 20 years ago, and he hasn't looked back. Today Jim Puppe is print shop supervisor at Minnkota Power Cooperative, in Grand Forks, right on the Minnesota border. In recent years this small

University of Washington Publications Services Seattle, Wash. As the largest university in-plant on the IPG Top 50 list, University of Washington Publications Services has an impressive operation. Not only does it fill a three-story, 48,000-square-foot building on the edge of the Seattle campus, but it includes 16 copy centers, two of which are located off campus. In addition to printing and copying, the mega-in-plant handles all of the university's incoming and outgoing mail—a massive undertaking, and part of the reason that Publications Services employs a staggering 160 full-time employees and 112 part-timers. But why? Why does a university need such

Globe Life & Accident Insurance Oklahoma City, Okla. For Globe Life & Accident Insurance, which goes after new customers through direct mail campaigns, the in-plant print shop is a vital part of the company. Currently Globe is saturating the market with over 300 million pieces of mail annually, almost all of which are printed and processed in-house at the 112,000-square-foot Oklahoma City in-plant facility. These huge volumes have grown slowly over the years, but that pace seems to have picked up within the last decade, according to Bill Leavell, manager of printing and building administration. He has been seeing an increase in

California Office of State Publishing Sacramento, Calif. Sometimes when you're big you've got to get smaller to survive. That's what happened in 1996 at the California Office of State Publishing (OSP), the largest state printing operation in the country. That was the year the Sacramento-based operation went non-mandated—when state agencies were no longer required to use the in-plant's services. The result was a significant drop in sales—10 percent over two years—and a corresponding reduction in staff. But the move also reduced some of the privatization challenges being directed at OSP by private sector printers and won the operation a lot of

by Bob Neubauer Even though it's the largest in-plant in the country and produces scores of important government documents, the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO), in Washington, D.C., doesn't usually get a lot of national attention. That all changed in September of 1998 when the Starr Report was unleashed on the world. GPO was given the arduous task of disseminating that report to an eager public. The initial report arrived on disk, but supplemental materials consisted of boxes of documents, which had to be shot as camera-ready copy. The resulting products were put on the Internet, on CD-ROMs and on paper—all under the

University of California, Berkeley Berkeley, Calif. University of California-Berkeley Printing Services has a long and distinguished history as the main provider of printed materials for the school. According to George Craig, director of printing services, the university created its first print shop in 1874 in the basement of an early administration building. Up until the 1950s the printing department was combined with the publishing division. When the printing needs of the school became too great, a separate department was born. "It was recognized as an early requirement and has grown since," Craig says of the printing department. Since those days back in

Boeing Printing and Micrographic Services Seattle, Wash. When an in-plant wins Best of Show in the annual IPG/IPMA In-Print contest, it's a sure sign of a top-notch, quality operation. But when a shop takes Best of Show four times in eight years, you know it's got to be one of the best in-plants in the country. That's certainly the truth about Boeing's 111-employee Printing and Micrographic Services department, which won its fourth Best of Show in 1997. Lead by Derek Budworth, the operation has the heavy responsibility of maintaining thousands of active manuals for the aerospace giant's numerous aircraft. It's 65,000-square-foot facility