A new video from In-plant Graphics takes a look at the Graph Expo debut of the Performance Challenge, a new assessment tool from Canon Solutions America that benchmarks in-plants against industry standards. Dozens of in-plant managers packed the session to learn more about how the tool can help their operations.
The official numbers aren't in yet, but the crowds at this week's Graph Expo show in Chicago seemed larger than in previous years. Those who attended certainly had a number of new products to check out. Here are just a few of the new machines unveiled at Graph Expo.
The in-plant at American River College produces one to two million impressions per month and serves a community college campus of more than 30,000 students. It does all this while constrained to 900 square feet.
Randy Patrick was fed up with wrestling with a folder that had been at his in-plant longer than he had. The rollers and wheels were worn, there were feeding issues and it was creating static on digitally printed jobs.
Salla Vaerma-Jadlos has helped lead ReproMail for the City and County of San Francisco through good times and bad. She's been at the in-plant for 21 years and has seen the department achieve success in uncertain times for the printing industry.
Growing up in Missouri with an interest in art and history, Michael Jaffe admits a career in the Northern California graphic arts scene wasn't his original plan.
"I just kind of fell into printing," quips the supervisor of the General Services Unit for the Judicial Council of California, in San Francisco.
Known for its “10,000 lakes*” and vast tracts of forest land, Minnesota is an outdoorsman’s paradise. So where better to make a stand for sustainable forestry than in the state’s largest city, Minneapolis?
Often when wide-format printing is discussed, the immediate connotation is of posters and banners. But a little creativity can go a long way, and with advancements in printer, ink and substrate technology, in-plants around the country are finding innovative ways to serve their parent companies with wide format, beyond posters and banners.
Deep inside a nondescript, two-story brick building in the center of Helena, Mont., Ryan Betcher ruminates about the days when the state’s Print & Mail Services Bureau was filled with printing presses, running eight hours a day.
With approximately 65 percent of in-plants offering wide-format printing according to IPG data, managers need to be aware how they can maintain high print quality at reasonable costs. The SpencerLab Digital Color Laboratory has just conducted an independent evaluation of print quality and ink usage-based running cost for several Hewlett Packard, Canon and Epson wide-format printers, in multiple applications.
