Heidelberg

With demand rising for quick-turnaround, short-run color, in-plants are looking to half-size presses to give them the versatility and shorter makereadies they need. By Carol Brzozowski For Rodney Brown, a half-size press is, in many ways, the perfect size press for his in-plant. "There's very few jobs that we can't do for the university on this press," says Brown, manager of University of Delaware's Graphic Communications Center. His shop's 20x28˝ Komori is compact enough to fit in his facility, and it allows the in-plant to stay competitive, since materials cost less than they would on a 40˝ press. Plus, the quality it produces

A year after Drupa, what new surprises do graphic arts vendors have in store for in-plants? Here's an advanced look. In-plant managers eager to see the latest graphic arts technologies can't do much better than Print 05 & Converting 05. Held in Chicago once every four years, this is the printing industry's main event. Larger than last year's Graph Expo show, Print 05 will feature nearly 800 exhibits covering more than 725,000 square feet of floor space. To help in-plants prepare, many of the industry's key vendors offered a peak at the products they plan to display in Chicago. Offset Boasting

Technology mingled with history as the AIIM On Demand Conference and Exposition brought the latest digital printing technologies to Philadelphia. By Bob Neubauer Prior to this year's AIIM On Demand Conference and Exposition, vendors had wondered whether attendees would follow the show from New York, where it took place for the past decade, to Philadelphia. But after watching more than 21,000 visitors flood the show's two floors' worth of exhibits in May, few left disappointed. True, last year's showing of 25,903 attendees topped this year's crowd. But as locations go, the Pennsylvania Convention Center, smack in the heart of downtown Philadelphia, beat New

The four-color Illumination magazine has won the University of Missouri-Columbia its third Best of Show award. By Bob Neubauer Some jobs get everyone's attention. Illumination magazine is one of them. "When Illumination comes through the plant, everyone kind of perks up," says Rick Wise, director of Printing Services at the University of Missouri-Columbia. That's because the publication repeatedly wins a top prize in the In-Print contest. Pride in this accomplishment makes in-plant employees take just a little more time to ensure that each issue is as perfect as it can be. "It always gets our best effort," affirms Wise. That extra care paid

Providing low-cost printing is no longer enough. At IPMA 2005, in-plants learned they must improve their customer relations skills and integrate themselves into their organizations' core businesses to survive. By Bob Neubauer More than 100 in-plant managers gathered in suburban Chicago last month for IPMA 2005, the annual International Publishing Management Association conference. Appropriately dubbed "Winds of Change," the conference focused on the need for in-plants to transform from printing operations into providers of financial and strategic value to their parent organizations. The conference took place at the elegant Oak Brook Hills Resort, in the midst of a Midwest heat wave that kept

More than 100 in-plant managers met in Columbia, Missouri, for the recent Association of College and University Printers conference. By Bob Neubauer These days, in-plant customers want more than just printing. Reorganizing your operation to meet their needs was one of the major themes at the recent Association of College and University Printers conference. Hosted by the University of Missouri-Columbia, ACUP 2005 brought 109 in-plant managers to central Missouri to listen to ideas on how to revamp their operations for the future. At the same time, attendees got a chance to mingle with managers from around the country and as far away as

Thanks to strong support from corporate management, Printing Services at Advocate Health Care is now a state-of-the-art in-plant… with an iGen3 to boot. According to Webster's Dictionary, an advocate is a person who pleads for a cause or propounds an idea. For Printing Services at Advocate Health Care, this definition couldn't be more apt. While some in-plants struggle to justify their existence to an ever-skeptical parent company, at Advocate, upper management fully supports Printing Services. So much so that, over the past five years, the corporation has made massive improvements to its 28-employee, 25,000-square-foot in-plant, replacing nearly every piece of production equipment. Based

Thanks to two back-to-back installations, Ball State University Printing Services is producing work faster and at a lower cost. By Bob Neubauer For 10 long years Ken Johnson and his crew at Ball State University Printing Services have been slowly building an equipment reserve fund. Now payoff time has come. Over the past couple of months, the Muncie, Ind., in-plant has used its savings to make two major installations that will completely overhaul the 11-employee operation. First the shop installed a six-page thermal Screen (U.S.A.) PlateRite 4100 platesetter. Then, in April, it added a four-color Heidelberg Printmaster 52 perfector. The new capabilities will

Users of monochrome devices say speed, quality and service are among their chief considerations when looking for equipment. By Gretchen A. Peck While many in-plants cite color printing as an emerging opportunity, black-and-white output is still their bread and butter. Many, if not the majority, of their digital jobs are monochromatic. And since the speed of the printer largely determines how much work the in-plant can produce, this has become a very important criterion; it's typically the first specification a prospective buyer wants to know. At Greenville, Texas-based L-3 Communications Integrated Systems, the in-plant uses an assortment of Konica-Minolta black-and-white systems

One of the largest university in-plants, the BYU Print & Mail Production Center is reorganizing to make itself more efficient and customer friendly. By Bob Neubauer When Brigham Young University merged its print and mail operations in 1998 to form the Print & Mail Production Center, it improved communication between the departments and enhanced its workflow. Now Doug Maxwell wants to take that merger even farther. The new director and his team are reorganizing and streamlining the 65-employee in-plant so that printing, copying and mail functions are completely integrated, not independent services with separate staffs, reporting structures and scheduling. "We felt that we