Canon U.S.A.

After putting up with an inefficient, Excel-based job management system for years, Ashland University Printing & Imaging Solutions acquired EDU Business Solutions' Print Shop Pro Manager software. Since then, life has been so much simpler for the in-plant's six full-time and four part-time and student workers. Customers can now pull up previous jobs and review the details, sparing staff from fielding their calls.

Like most of the East Coast, Jim Lyons braced for Hurricane Irene last August. Unlike most Easterners, though, his in-plant at the State University of New York (SUNY) at New Paltz is only now recovering from the resulting catastrophe.

At the INTERQUEST Digital Printing in Government and Higher Education Forum speakers from government and university in-plants discussed best practices at their operations. In between, principals from INTERQUEST—the market and technology research and consulting firm that organized the event—presented trends and research results.

"There is a drum beat in Congress to cut printing," declared U.S. Public Printer Bill Boarman on Wednesday, speaking to a crowd of about 80 government and higher-ed printers, consultants and vendors. He was addressing the INTERQUEST Digital Printing in Government and Higher Education Forum in Washington, D.C. His task, he stressed, as leader of the Government Printing Office, is not to preserve printing at all costs, but to make sure reductions are done in a way that doesn't hurt the legislative process.

To survive and prosper in these difficult economic times, in-plant managers need to ask themselves some soul-searching questions to establish why the department exists and confirm what it offers its host organization, both now and in the future.

THE IN-PLANT industry, like many other industries, has been knocked off balance by the economic turmoil of the past several years. As companies have been forced to cut costs, print has been identified as an area of potential cost savings. Gone are the days of 500-page, end-of-year reports and formal printed presentations. These major drivers of print volume have been replaced by documents housed on SharePoint sites and PowerPoint decks to be presented digitally. And now that companies have made this behavioral change, they are unlikely to change back.

IN A CLASSIC "Peanuts" comic strip, Schroeder confronts Charlie Brown with scores of numbers to illustrate the ineptitude of their eternally winless baseball team. He builds quite a case, and when he finally finishes recounting the team's blundering exploits, Charlie Brown offers a curt reply.

JUDGING BY the number of in-plant managers walking the Graph Expo show floor last month, there are quite a few in-plants itching to leave the recession behind and get busy adding equipment. The show gave them plenty to ogle, too, particularly in the inkjet arena.

IPG checked out the most innovative products at Graph Expo 2011. Here, Editor Bob Neubauer chats with Frances Cicogna of Canon about the new imagePRESS C7010VPS, which teams Canon's offset-like 1,200-dpi resolution with Océ PRISMAsync workflow, and offers up to eight hours of plan-ahead production.

Graph Expo was noticeably more busy this year, due in part to a surge in attendance by in-plant managers. These videos will give you a sense of what it was like.