Duplo USA

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.

In the summer of 2010, Leslie Rutledge moved from her position at San Diego State University, where she was manager of ReproGraphics, to head up the Graphic Services department at Brown University, in Providence, R.I. "Prior to my arrival, the university had undergone a reorganization, which had to be completed by June 30th," Rutledge says. Targeting redundancy, the university was combining administrative services to achieve greater efficiencies.

Vendors reported a good amount of interest in bindery equipment at this year's GRAPH EXPO in Chicago. The bindery equipment at the show offered in-plants some great opportunities to expand their services and increase their efficiency.

The strong turnout of in-plants at Graph Expo took me by surprise. With all the travel cutbacks of recent years, I thought we'd have trouble filling seats at the roundtable luncheon we hosted; we ended up with a packed room. I could hardly turn a corner at the show without bumping into an in-plant manager.

WAYNE FRENCH didn't need a crystal ball to see what was coming. With two Shinohara presses, his in-plant at Ithaca College was proficient at churning out long runs of materials for the 119-year-old private school. The trouble was, these pieces were largely being warehoused, where many became outdated before they could be used.

Customers want gloss. That’s what Randall Bramlett started to notice last year. What’s more, they were going off campus to get it. This was troubling to Bramlett, manager of Printing Services at Columbus State University.

Though digital printing equipment made the biggest splash at the On Demand Conference and Exposition in March, the Washington, D.C. show was chock full of bindery equipment too. IPG visited all of the major bindery vendors. Here's a look at what we saw.

Bindery equipment is often very durable, leading some in-plants to keep it on the floor for a long time. That said, few shops have managed to keep a folder in operation as long as NW Natural’s Office Services department.

Love’s Travel and Country Stores started a new in-plant about two years ago and has saved the company more than $1 million so far. Recently the in-plant expanded yet again with the addition of new finishing equipment. 

Our core business isn't necessarily printing, it's educating students," declares Bill King, Supervisor of Printing and Publishing at Mesa Public Schools. "We ask ourselves, 'How can we shape our operation to mirror the core values of the school district?' "