Canon U.S.A.

According to IPG data, almost 22 percent of in-plants have an imagesetter. Until last month, one of them was the University of Mississippi, which has been churning out film with a Screen Katana for years. The main reason the shop stuck with it? “It was paid for,” laughs Tony Seaman, director of Printing and Graphic Services at the Oxford, Miss., shop. 

After 30 years, Xerox’s reign at University of Oregon Printing & Mailing Services has come to an end. The 46-employee in-plant, which has used Xerox DocuTechs and DocuColors since the mid ’70s, has just installed 10 new printers and copiers from Canon and Ikon, after Ikon Office Solutions turned in the lowest bid. Director J.R. Gaddis says the new equipment saved the university 20 percent over previous costs.

Dozens of in-plant managers came to Philadelphia recently for the On Demand Conference. Here's a brief glimpse of what they saw there.

Philadelphia was the digital printing capital of the country this week, as the AIIM/On Demand Show brought thousands of printers and manufacturers to IPG's hometown. Among them were scores of in-plant managers from around the country.

IPG Editor Bob Neubauer ran into managers from Temple University, Penn State, The Hershey Co., Securian Financial Group, University of Delaware, The National Board of Medical Examiners, and many other organizations as he walked the show floor. Bucknell University brought a half dozen in-plant staff members on a bus from Lewisburg, Pa.

For decades, new equipment was a rarity at the New York City Department of Health’s Reproduction Unit. Like many in-plants, the 18-employee shop languished in its basement abode, accepting equipment handouts from other agencies and buying inexpensive, small equipment when it could cobble together some funds. Then, about four years ago, everything changed. The Health Department invested $1.13 million in new press, computer-to-plate and bindery equipment for the in-plant. Then federal bio terrorism grant money funded more than a dozen additional machines. This astounding equipment infusion is unlike anything ever seen in the in-plant world.

At the awards ceremony this afternoon at the On Demand Conference & Expo, InfoTrends, a leading market research and consulting firm in the digital imaging and document solutions industry, announced the winners of the fourth annual On Demand Best of Show Awards program.

Canon U.S.A. was once again ranked first in the overall page copier market in the U.S., according to Gartner’s Printer, Copier and MFP Quarterly Statistics Database for fourth quarter 2008. Canon had 21 percent of the market, according to the database.

“Canon remains dedicated to making investments in technology that allows us to deliver value with the most robust array of digital document imaging solutions on the market,” said Ted Nakamura, executive vice president and general manager, Imaging Systems Group.

The PIA/GATF Digital Printing Council has published a study called “Digital Printing and Survivability in the U.S. Postal System.” It tested five digital presses and one offset press to find out how durable their products were once they hit the mail stream.

The presses involved were Canon ImagePRESS C7000VP, HP Indigo 5500, Kodak Nexpress S3000, Océ CS650 Pr, Xerox iGen3 and a Komori offset press. The presses printed a total of 400 postcards, which were put into the traditional mail stream through four U.S. cities. Upon delivery, each postcard was tested for marking or abrasion.

The move to a digital, on-demand platform was putting T.J. Keesler’s bindery in...well, a bind. Keesler, facility manager at Georgia Correctional Industries (GCI) in Buford, Ga., had to accommodate his customers’ needs for shorter runs and quicker turnaround times. “We just started out digital, on-demand printing about a year ago, and we realized that a lot of our customers wanted coil binding,” Keesler recounts. “We were farming this work out, or we were doing it at a much slower pace with some antiquated equipment and also some hand work. I wanted to automate the process.”

For years, producing commencement programs was a cumbersome task for Appalachian State University Printing and Publications. Printed sheets had to be moved by hand between stand-alone collating, stitching and folding equipment to create about 15,000 programs. “We hired temp employees for that type of work,” says Joyce Mahaffey, director of the Boone, N.C., in-plant.