Eastman Kodak Co.

Implementing a color management system will require you to work with more than one vendor, but the payoffs include material cost savings, color-consistent products and improved customer satisfaction. by Caroline Miller THE DECISION to implement a color management system was a no-brainer for Multi-Visual Products' owner Craig Graves. The Murrieta, Calif.-based company—which prints trading cards for youth sports leagues, magazine covers, calendars, magnets, stickers and mouse pads—had a color problem. When MVP began eight years ago, it had a code blue calibration process, including a scanner and an output device. The company had to tweak the output devices as best it could, but there

By merging or working closely with their data centers, in-plants are expanding their operations, saving money and ensuring their survival. by SCOTT BURY Across America, businesses and institutions are merging their in-plants into their Information Technology departments' print output organizations. It makes sense. After all, both operations use much of the same equipment: copiers, high-speed laser printers, powerful computer workstations and robust networks. We've taken a look at how three organizations have made such mergers work using different approaches. Georgia Tech: Rethinking Leads To Reorganizing "Contrary to what we in the printing business want to believe, printing is going away," contends Paul

When the City of San Diego's in-plant sees an opportunity, it rushes right in to take advantage of it. The resulting mix of services, both traditional and nontraditional, has kept customers happy. by CAROLINE MILLER Not only is variety the spice of life for the City of San Diego's in-plant. It's also the key to its success. "We've found that we've had to continually reinvent ourselves, and that like all good in-plants we have to always anticipate the needs of our customers before our customers do," says Liam McGuigan, deputy director of the general services department for the City of San Diego. Situated

Print 01 featured numerous innovations in prepress, offset and bindery technologies. Find out all about them in part two of our show report. &002;by Bob Neubauer Walking the show floor at Print 01 was a printer's dream. Presses were churning out color posters, software was being demonstrated on large screens for small crowds, books were being folded, stitched and trimmed—wherever you looked, something was happening. Though the September 11 attacks brought the show to a halt, show management said about 66,300 people attended overall. Vendors reported a number of sales. Heidelberg's NexPress subsidiary sold more than 70 NexPress 2100 presses, part of

NexPress is ready to battle for business in the digital color printing arena with its NexPress 2100. by Mark Smith Rochester, N.Y., might seem an unlikely place to be ground zero in the next big battle for dominance of the digital color printing market. That is, until one takes into account the city is the corporate hometown of NexPress Solutions LLC (a Heidelberg/Kodak joint venture) and Xerox Corp. Print 01 brought a temporary shift in the battlefield to Chicago, setting up a head-to-head bid for attention between the NexPress 2100 and Xerox iGen3 (formerly FutureColor) digital presses. (For its part, Xerox contends that

Digital color printing has improved tremendously in recent years. It's time for in-plants to focus on the benefits it can offer them. DON'T LOOK now, but digital color printing is poised to become the darling of the in-plant world. Faster, cheaper and more reliable than ever—and boasting improved print quality—digital color printing is finally living up to the hype it once received. Despite all the hoopla, however, one of the biggest strikes against it, marketing reps will tell you, has long been lack of awareness in the marketplace. And then along came Heidelberg. Ever since Drupa, where the offset king announced that

Yale University New Haven, Conn. Yale University provides its professors and students an environment that's unlikely to be matched at any other campus—and that includes the services provided by its in-plant. "In the academic world, we're unique in the wide range of services that we provide to our clients," says Richard Masotta, director of Yale's Reprographic and Imaging Services (RIS). That boast isn't mere sales talk. With roughly 100 employees and workspace at three locations on campus, RIS's myriad offerings range from graphic design and Web site development to copier maintenance and electronic, color, laser and offset printing. RIS also manages a technology

Texas Department of Health and Human Services Austin, Texas After years of fighting to keep his in-plant alive, Robert McDaniel has finally been able to spend some time focusing solely on improving his shop. Six years ago, the Texas Council on Competitive Government consolidated 31 state print shops in Travis County, in central Texas, into a mere nine shops. These in-plants, which lack right of first refusal, were also mandated to operate on a full cost recovery basis and forbidden from printing for any type of commercial operation. The result? They were left fighting each other and commercial print shops in a limited pool

Best Buy Minneapolis, Minn. When a business is able to grow from $160,000 in sales to over $7 million in less than a decade some people might attribute the success to a midnight deal with the devil—or at the very least a trade for some magic beans. But for Rick Fiebiger, director of Best Buy's 83-employee Print Solutions Group, all it took was focus and attention. "You really need to run your operation like you would if you were a commercial printer," declares Fiebiger. "You've got to earn the business, you have to provide top-notch service and you have to measure your contributions

In part two of our Graph Expo report, we detail the latest advances in prepress, e-commerce, bindery and consumables. The recent Graph Expo show in Chicago drew more than 45,000 industry professionals to McCormick Place. Last month IPG took you there as we detailed many of the technologies on display, including direct imaging and digital printing innovations. But with nearly 575 exhibitors at the four-day event, we couldn't cover it all in one issue. So this month we're presenting even more Graph Expo highlights. Prepress Group Logic exhibited MassTransit, version 3.6, its high-speed digital file transfer and remote proofing software. MassTransit