In-plant Profiles

Allstate Print Communications Center Wheeling, Ill. The Allstate Print Communications Center does everything an in-plant is designed to do—and then some. The main function of any in-plant is to save the parent company money on its printing needs. That's exactly what the in-plant at Allstate does well. According to Jerry Grouzard, print operations manager at Allstate, the in-plant expects to save the company millions of dollars this year. "We save them money on print applications," says Grouzard. "Allstate knows we can print items cost effectively." Over the past half century, the in-plant has evolved from a small duplicating shop with about

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

Meeting tight deadlines is even tougher when your equipment breaks down. Sometimes selecting the right paper is the key to productivity. When the duplicating department at New York law firm Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson receives a printing request from one of the firm's attorneys, it knows the urgency and quality requirements that come with the request. Whether it's a brief from a bankruptcy case, a subpoena or a client document, the in-plant knows it must produce the material right away—no matter what time of day it is or what day of the week. With constant deadline pressure, the 18-employee in-plant must

Though the publishing industry is infused with digital technologies, the in-plants that serve publishers often run more modest operations. In remote Madawaska, Maine, digital printing technology is about as common as a winter sunbather. "We haven't seen much up here, because we're in a very rural area," says Maurice Morin, in-plant printing manager of the St. John Valley Times. Morin, who oversees five full-time and three part-time employees in this town on the Canadian border, takes this all in stride, however. "Digital technology is something that larger firms can afford to buy. The money's just not here. People here want

A new five-color press is just the beginning for Spartan Stores, which plans to expand its in-plant even more. Wander through any grocery store and you are likely to see thousands of dollars worth of printing. Posters line the windows, inviting shoppers to come inside; stacks of circulars greet them as they walk through the automatic doors; and multi-color shelf cards point out sale items. Then there are the endless ad inserts in the Sunday paper. Who designs and prints up all this material? For a group of grocery retailers in the Midwest, it's the in-plant print shop at Spartan Stores. Forget

When a tornado virtually leveled his campus, Brad Johnson turned to a fellow in-plant manager to help him print his college's documents. When the tornado hit, it hit hard. Like a chainsaw, it tore through the once-serene campus of Gustavus Adolphus College, tearing up trees, smashing buildings and inflicting some $68 million in damage on the St. Peter, Minn.-based school. When Brad Johnson got a look at the wreckage the next morning, he couldn't believe his eyes. "I was in shock," recalls the director of printing services. "I've never seen anything like it. It was one of the hardest moments of my life."

Montgomery County Public School's in-plant explains why going the digital route enabled more customer satisfaction—and created more jobs. Once upon a time, taking a school test meant sharpening your No. 2 pencil and concentrating on filling out the answers on a piece of paper. Today, in some circles, that procedure has given way to the click of a computer mouse. An end result of this trend has been the reduction of unnecessary waste. With that in mind, and the explosion in the use of digital printers/copiers, in-plant managers are starting to rethink their production processes. Some educational institutions are already taking notice. At