Agfa Graphics

Penn State University State College, Pa. Penn State Document Services faces a problem common to in-plants that lack the right of first refusal. If a department or professor needs a print job and they expect it to cost less than $5,000, they don't need to get bids on it. "They can just go to the print shop down the street because it's on the way home or their cousin's best friend works there, or whatever," laments Michael Pierick, director of Document Services. "We have to compete for every job, so we need to be concerned that every product and service line we provide

Don't cling to your analog past. Digital solutions abound. Analyze your operation, research your options and move into the digital age. The technology is now securely in place for totally digital production of a job from initial design to printed piece. In the near future, in fact, the decisions you make may not be whether to go digital, but rather which parts of the digital pie you choose to bring in-house and which parts you use outside services for. To make these decisions you need to be aware of the options that are available so that you can analyze your present and future

Graph Expo marked the debut appearance of many of the technologies unveiled at Drupa. After seeing so many new technologies displayed at the massive Drupa trade show in Düsseldorf, Germany, trade journalists found few surprises at the recent Graph Expo show in Chicago. But it was for printers, not journalists, that McCormick Place opened its doors—and they were certainly impressed. "I thought the show was very complete, with more than enough new things to see and want," remarked Don Davis, associate director of LSU Graphic Services, in Baton Rouge, La. He went to the show to look at prepress and computer-to-plate (CTP) equipment and

Steady improvement over six years turned the once meager in-plant at Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Maine into an award winner. WHEN ANDREW Haynes started working at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Maine in 1994, the in-plant wasn't exactly state-of-the-art. "The equipment was so old that you really couldn't do anything with it," the prepress and press production specialist recalls. But help was on the way—in the form of a two-color, 26˝ Heidelberg MOZ press. Haynes arrived at the beginning of a six-year period of growth that turned the South Portland, Maine, in-plant into a high-production, award-winning facility. These changes not

Having a wide-format color ink-jet printer in-house can provide a valuable service to your customers. To be successful—and stay alive—you must provide your customers with better service than commercial printers. That means giving the customers what they want, when they want it. For Tino Castro, this meant purchasing a 12-color 52˝ ColorSpan Displaymaker 12 wide-format color ink-jet printer last year. "For the past two to three years I've seen [demand] increase," says the printing services manager for the County of Riverside, Calif. In the past, customers would come into his 20-employee shop with work orders for posters or banners and Castro would have

Rob Lilley spent seven years learning graphic arts in the army. He uses his military experience to manage New Jersey Transit's in-plant. Rob Lilley discovered his love of graphic arts in a very unlikely place—the United States Army. Now, as manager of print graphics at New Jersey Transit, he uses his military skills to run an efficient—and growing—in-plant. Under Lilley's management, the in-plant grew from 5,000 to 25,000 square feet, and went from producing 16 million pieces a year up to 44 million pieces, mostly schedules, forms and stationery. Lilley, 51, was born in San Antonio Texas. His father was an engineer whose

In its first appearance in the In-Print contest, SAFECO took top honors with a colorful marketing piece that required lots of attention to detail. As a perk for its top agents, SAFECO organizes an annual event called the "Conference of Champions," which brings the company's top producers together to attend workshops, mingle with executives and make new friends. Next year that conference will take place in both Vienna, Austria, and Carlsbad, Calif. To motivate its independent agents to work harder and qualify for the free conference, the Seattle-based insurance and financial services firm wanted to send out a quality marketing piece, bursting with color

The world of color scanners is constantly changing. Discover new advances and products that can benefit your in-plant. COLOR SCANNING isn't what it used to be. Say good-bye to the time-consuming task of separating transparencies from prints and switching scanner modes accordingly. Today's scanners recognize what's on the bed and automatically change the mode for you, allowing you to scan film, slides and photos on the same device. "That's been the target machine that the manufacturers were trying to get to," says Don Rogers, product manager for scanners at Heidelberg Prepress. "These scanners allow all the work to be handled in-house without investing in

Thousands of visitors flocked to Drupa 2000, the world's largest graphic arts trade show. IPG was among them. Find out what we learned about the direction the printing industry is heading. Everything worth seeing in the graphic arts world was at Drupa 2000. For two solid weeks, the world's printers crowded Düsseldorf, Germany's fairgrounds to visit some 1,669 exhibitors from 44 countries. In-Plant Graphics was there, finding out about the latest innovations and trends so we could share them with you. With 18 halls to visit, though, the task was a bit overwhelming. The most prevalent trend in the offset world was the move

Drupa 2000 was the best of the old, the best of the new and the best of what's yet to be for true integrated digital prepress. As far as prepress was concerned, Drupa 2000 affirmed the reliability of the old, elevated the promise of the new and positioned leading market players in new strategic patterns. All that, in just 14 days. Drupa 2000 registered a strong vote for the necessity of true digital prepress integration—as well as the health of proven technologies, from imagesetters to scanners. Drupa also marked the true affirmation of PDF as the globally accepted next standard—with more