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Dave Schlueter has been intrigued by in-plants since he was in school. So it's no wonder he's made his mark on the industry. By Mike Llewellyn It didn't take long for Dave Schlueter, director of printing at Piper Jaffray, to learn printing would be his trade. When he was young, his dad would occasionally take him to work at Jensens Printing in Minneapolis, and he remembers feeling awestruck by the huge presses. That sense of wonder led him to major in graphic arts at the city's Dunwoody College of Technology, where he also earned an IPMA Student of the Year Award. It wasn't

One of the biggest challenges an in-plant can face is shifting to an all-digital workflow. But most of the time, say these managers, it's worth it. By Mike Llewellyn Over the course of his 30 years in printing, Dan Dore, operations supervisor at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), has seen it all. He was there for the rise of offset lithography. He saw the advent of digital printing. And now he's guiding his in-plant into an all-digital workflow. By the end of this year, all of the federally funded in-plant's offset equipment will be sent off to government surplus, and the shop

As the fourth generation to work in the graphic arts, Lise Melton has done plenty to make her forefathers proud. By Bob Neubauer As a child in Rockford, Ill., Lise Melton may have had an inkling she was destined to work in the printing industry. It was, after all, a family tradition. "I kind of grew up around printing," she explains. "My great grandfather was a graphic artist who drew on litho stones." His son, in turn, started a printing company called General Lithographic. Melton's father worked there as an estimator. So when it came time for Melton to attend college, small wonder she

With high-speed, black-and-white printers designed to bear the brunt of an in-plant's workload, managers want to see how fast the machines cut costs. By Mike Llewellyn JIM ALLEN, the newly appointed manager of Printing Services at New York City's Fashion Institute of Technology, runs a pair of Océ 2600s to handle flyers, instructional packets for professors and countless other nuts-and-bolts projects that come into the in-plant every day. With black-and-white printing accounting for 85 percent of the in-plant's workload, the 2600s have become the backbone of the FIT shop. "They're definitely workhorses," says Allen. "They do almost all of the work." That's how many

An unexpected Spring snowstorm and a down economy couldn't keep attendees from crowding the 10th annual On Demand show. By Bob Neubauer and Mike Llewellyn Despite a surprise spring snowfall that blanketed New York City and weakened first-day attendance, the 10th annual On Demand Digital Printing & Publishing Conference went on as usual early last month. The exhibit hall at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center seemed much larger this year, due in part to On Demand's co-location with the AIIM Conference & Exposition. As a result, there were 438 exhibitors, compared with 150+ at last year's show. By the event's second day,

Back in October 2002, Canon USA released its CLC 3900 (now 3900+), a copier/printer turning out 39 pages per minute (ppm) in either color or black and white. The 3900 is a slightly-less-robust addition to a product line that includes Canon's CLC 5000, a production-level copier/printer producing 50 ppm. At the time, Mason Olds, the company's then-general manager for the color systems division, claimed, "This product has no direct competition right now." Jump to February, 2003: Xerox goes head-to-head with Canon with the release of the Xerox 3535, pushing 35 ppm in either black and white or color. Until that late-winter release, Canon

Competition among the major digital color printing vendors is tougher than ever. In-plants, as luck would have it, are caught in the crossfire. by Mike Llewellyn FOR ANY large organization, if they're saying 'I need this job now,' they're going to want to send it to an in-plant," declares Abby Abhyankar, vice president for integrated marketing at Xerox. "In-plants represent short runs with fast response times and no compromises on quality." That's not news to in-plant managers, whose job it is to make sure their shops offer the highest speed at the lowest price. But it is making headlines at companies like

Trinity Church has played a part in much of New York's history. On September 11, 2001, it participated again. The in-plant, as usual, was there to help.

Color jobs have been on the rise for years. To meet the demand, in-plant managers are increasingly turning to color copiers. by Mike Llewellyn Battelle is a Columbus, Ohio-based research and development firm that relies heavily on its in-plant's color copying services. Brian Soppelsa, manager of Publications Management and Production, says his shop had been using a Xerox DocuColor 30 for five years, and has had a Canon CLC 1150 for just over one year now. "They're busy machines," he observes. "We run almost everything off of them—a lot of proposals, reports, presentations and in-house distribution pieces." "Busy" is how most managers describe their

In-plants at health care organizations, like Mayo Clinic, feel that their work is helping to save lives. Story by Mike Llewellyn "You can feel extremely good about working here," says Claire Metzler, supervisor of the in-plant at Mayo Clinic, in Rochester, Minn. And with good reason. Mayo Clinic is one of the most respected names in health care, priding itself on its compassionate patient care and best known for its cancer treatments and organ transplants. Likewise, Mayo Clinic's in-plant is a standout in its own industry, with 27 employees and a full range of services, extending even to Web-based job submission and data