Agfa Graphics

In all the hoopla over print-on-demand, little attention is given to the bindery demands that help realize on-demand's potential. By Marie Ranoia Alonso Obviously, an on-demand printer that relies on digital printing technology must be able to assure customers that deadline-sensitive print jobs will be produced on time. After all, there's little advantage to digital color output if a job cannot be finished quickly. As a result, in-house finishing capabilities are necessary for an on-demand printing operation, which must decide if in-line or off-line finishing, or more commonly a combination of the two, will bolster its digital printing effort with enough postpress power. The

The leaders of the digital graphic arts industry converged in Boston recently to display their latest wares. Seybold returned to Boston this year after a two-year stint in New York—and what a homecoming it was. All the leaders of the digital graphic arts industry were on hand to show off their new technologies. Adobe, naturally, took a lead position at the show, as the father of PDF. Adobe President John Warnock and CEO Charles Geschke laid out their collective version of publishing for both print and the Internet during the exposition's opening keynote. Both Adobe executives stressed that publishers in the near future

USAA San Antonio, Texas With a customer base of more than 3.5 million people—a figure that grows every year at a rate of 6 to 8 percent—the USAA in-plant in San Antonio, Texas, is kept busy on a daily basis. This insurance and financial services company's in-plant department was founded about 40 years ago to primarily print business forms and declaration pages for automobile policies. Today, the operation boasts a 40,000-square-foot facility and averages 36,000 jobs per year—a figure that is expected to grow annually, according to Jack Mondin, executive director of publishing output services. Despite this anticipated growth, Mondin put some pressure

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

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

Despite falling just a month after IPEX in England, this year's show drew more than 44,000 visitors—and the vendors didn't let them down. When graphic arts industry representatives from all over the world arrived in Chicago for Graph Expo recently, Xeikon decided to shock them a little bit. At a press conference, the Belgium-based digital color press manufacturer contended that digital color production costs are now comparable with offset at runs of 1,000 units or more. Based on a study Xeikon had commissioned, which used real costs and time factors in actual production environments, the company insisted that digital color presses have

As printers integrate digital and computer-to-plate technologies into their workflows, the role of electronic imposition is increasingly in the spotlight. Imposition tools are getting more mature—Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) is making its impact on imposition solutions that stand both within and without bundled workflow packages, and new software solutions are launching with more frequency and fervor. At the same time, prepress managers are looking for integrated imposition solutions—tools that can allow the adoption of an all-digital CTP environment. Why? The technological enhancement of digital imposition software, large-format computer-to-film devices and new launches in the CTP market have put greater emphasis on

Buying a RIP? May sure you understand all the issues involved. We've assembled a panel of experts to answer some common questions. Remember back when RIPing a file meant tearing a manila folder in half? Graphic arts terminology has come a long way. Who even bothers to say "raster image processor" any more? It's much easier to say "RIP." If only it were just as easy to buy one. As RIP technology has advanced, a number of issues have surfaced, forcing in-plant managers to do some deep thinking before opening their wallets. To help you understand some of these issues, we've gone

In-plants all over the country have gone digital and are enjoying a host of big benefits. Here's a look at what they like—and what they'd like to see—in their systems. "DIGITAL PRINTING, while convenient, can never match the quality of traditional offset." Sound familiar? It does to proponents of digital printing systems. They have heard this argument plenty of times before. And, in their opinion, it's an argument without merit. "It's very high-quality printing," says Meredith's Bob Furstenau of his IBM InfoColor 70. "It's very comparable to offset." And in some cases, even better. Furstenau, director of digital content management for the