Business Management - Insourcing

Providing services of any kind to the Houston Independent School District means thinking big—there's simply no other way to approach the task. Educating more than 220,000 students in a 301-square-mile network of elementary, middle and high schools, HISD is the seventh-largest public school system in the nation and the largest in Texas. With an annual budget in excess of $1.6 billion and a work force of more than 28,000 full- and part-time employees, HISD is a producer and a consumer of services on a truly Texas-sized scale.

Outsourcing state printing work is officially a waste of money in Wisconsin. That was the result of an audit of the Wisconsin Department of Administration, as reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last month.

The Legislative Audit Bureau determined that the state was wrong when it insisted it could save money by outsourcing printing. In reality, according to the audit, the state could save up to $616,500 by hiring 35 state workers instead.

Insourcing is a great source of revenue for in-plants. But what happens if your parent organization frowns upon one of your customers? At Pittsburg State University (PSU), officials declared this week that the in-plant could no longer accept work from politicians, according to a report by KOAM-TV, in Pittsburg, Kansas. Officials worried that taking print work from politicians gave the impression the university was endorsing one candidate over another. (Never mind that all candidates were welcome to bring their work, and politicians paid the same price as other customers.) Though the in-plant manager at PSU did not return IPG’s calls today, he was presumably

INSOURCING PRINTING from outside organizations has become a common practice at in-plants. More than half do it, and that’s been the case for four or five years now, according to our surveys. Our latest research reveals that those who insource get an average of 13 percent of their work this way. A few of the more zealous insourcers say it makes up 75-80 percent of their business, while a handful of dabblers estimate that less than 1 percent of their work comes from insourcing. Most are in the 5-10 percent range. The half that doesn’t insource has its reasons. They’re worried customers will

INSOURCING IS more than a trend. It can be a life saver to your in-plant. Who knew it would send me on a 3,000-mile last-gasp attempt to rescue my in-plant? Insourcing in Theory The policy of providing printing services to clients outside of the in-plant’s organization pays off in more ways than one. In the utopian model of insourcing, the in-plant manager zeros out his budget with external revenue and gives internal clients the lowest cost services possible. In return, the external clients gain the benefit of the in-plant’s cost-cutting philosophy. I sat through a session on insourcing at an IPMA national conference

Making money for your organization's bottom line by insourcing can mean all the difference in whether or not your in-plant survives.

Four years ago, Terry Fulcomer, the supervisor for the Prince William County in-plant, in Woodbridge, Va., had a dilemma. His half million dollar, six employee in-plant's equipment was fast becoming obsolete. But, catching up and keeping up with technology was an expensive proposition—one that Fulcomer's budget was not inclined to support.

Ace Hardware Downers Grove, Ill. When Mark Krammer, graphic service manager at Ace Hardware, first came to the Downers Grove, Ill., in-plant 15 years ago he was on a mission. He wanted to make Ace Hardware's in-plant that best it could be, but he also wanted to do something more. He wanted to bring the company some thing extra in the form of revenue. "In any operation there are always peaks and valleys," Krammer observes. "What better way to maximize those valleys than to subsidize your company's printing by taking on commercial work?" Insourcing revenue has helped Ace Hardware's 92-employee in-plant to offset

Insourcing can save your in-plant. Find out how from managers who have done it. In the early '90s Liz Messner noticed an alarming trend: In-plants everywhere were being shut down. Her own in-plant at the Hospital and Health System Association of Pennsylvania Service Co. (HAPSCO) could well have been the next victim. Fortunately, though, HAPSCO had decided a few years before to let her Harrisburg, Pa., in-plant start insourcing printing from outside organizations. That decision, says Messner, has kept the in-plant in business. "Had we not gone outside and brought work in...we would not be here today," declares Messner, senior director of

Insourcing can bring in revenue to fund new equipment, while keeping your underutilized machines busy. But controversy surrounds the topic. In June of 1997, Larry Sutherland was a little anxious. With outsourcing on the minds of so many business executives, the former manager of Eastman Chemical Creative Services worried that his Kingsport, Tenn.-based shop might be the next to fall in the name of cutting corporate costs. So he decided to take the offensive. "We went to management and said, 'We think we can reduce our costs by bringing in income and offsetting our costs,' " Sutherland recalls. What he had in mind was