Heidelberg

USAA San Antonio, Texas With a customer base of more than 3.5 million people—a figure that grows every year at a rate of 6 to 8 percent—the USAA in-plant in San Antonio, Texas, is kept busy on a daily basis. This insurance and financial services company's in-plant department was founded about 40 years ago to primarily print business forms and declaration pages for automobile policies. Today, the operation boasts a 40,000-square-foot facility and averages 36,000 jobs per year—a figure that is expected to grow annually, according to Jack Mondin, executive director of publishing output services. Despite this anticipated growth, Mondin put some pressure

Hard copy originals? Get with it! To increase efficiency, boost quality and cut costs, in-plants are digitizing their workflows. Most in-plants are accustomed to handling jobs that are crucial to an organization's success, but when the documents you're producing deal with classified test results on components for new military weapons systems... well, let's just say it's important that the workflow process be handled as efficiently as possible. That's why the in-plant staff at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory are working overtime on a project that many other shops also find themselves tackling: to assemble and streamline the most efficient system of digital

As printers integrate digital and computer-to-plate technologies into their workflows, the role of electronic imposition is increasingly in the spotlight. Imposition tools are getting more mature—Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) is making its impact on imposition solutions that stand both within and without bundled workflow packages, and new software solutions are launching with more frequency and fervor. At the same time, prepress managers are looking for integrated imposition solutions—tools that can allow the adoption of an all-digital CTP environment. Why? The technological enhancement of digital imposition software, large-format computer-to-film devices and new launches in the CTP market have put greater emphasis on

A new five-color press is just the beginning for Spartan Stores, which plans to expand its in-plant even more. Wander through any grocery store and you are likely to see thousands of dollars worth of printing. Posters line the windows, inviting shoppers to come inside; stacks of circulars greet them as they walk through the automatic doors; and multi-color shelf cards point out sale items. Then there are the endless ad inserts in the Sunday paper. Who designs and prints up all this material? For a group of grocery retailers in the Midwest, it's the in-plant print shop at Spartan Stores. Forget

Buying a RIP? May sure you understand all the issues involved. We've assembled a panel of experts to answer some common questions. Remember back when RIPing a file meant tearing a manila folder in half? Graphic arts terminology has come a long way. Who even bothers to say "raster image processor" any more? It's much easier to say "RIP." If only it were just as easy to buy one. As RIP technology has advanced, a number of issues have surfaced, forcing in-plant managers to do some deep thinking before opening their wallets. To help you understand some of these issues, we've gone

Cloudy skies did not obscure the illumination coming from the many educational sessions at the IPMA 98 conference, which drew 620 people.

These days, who can afford a new six-color press? At University of Missouri-Columbia Printing Services, it was just a matter of saving up. How can you buy a brand new six-color press without going into debt—or begging your management for money? Wayne Merritt knows. His in-plant at the University of Missouri-Columbia has just installed a new six-color, 40˝ Heidelberg Speedmaster 102 perfecting press. And he doesn't owe anyone a cent. "In the last four years we have managed to save enough money to buy it outright," reveals Merritt, director of Printing Services. The shop's savings, he added, were about $2

Four-color jobs, both offset and digital, make up half of the Exxon in-plant's workload. AFTER THE Valdez oil spill leaked almost 11 million gallons of North Slope crude oil onto the Alaska coastline in early 1989, Exxon admirably wasted no time diving into the cleanup and recovery effort. During that process, communicating with government agencies and other outside interests was of crucial importance. Houston's Exxon Print Center was the ready for the task. Boasting 27 employees and a wealth of sheetfed presses, digital printers and bindery equipment, the in-plant printed manuals and brochures filled with four-color pictures chronicling the three-year

Planning comes from people, not spreadsheets. Here's one manager's take on how human interaction can be more important than fancy figures. In the back of one of my file cabinets is a stack of documents. Every now and again, as the need arises, one or more of these volumes is pulled out, dusted off, and a number, an observation, or some factoid is pulled out for inclusion in some new report I am working on. What are these works? There's a couple of consultant reports, two major internal task force self studies—one with a rebuttal written by the previous management—a handful of

Converting to electronic prepress is helping the Marians of the Immaculate Conception in-plant keep up with its ever-growing workload. Keeping up with the needs of some 600 priests and brothers would be difficult for even a large commercial printer. But for an in-plant with a staff of 12, meeting the print production demands of the Marians of the Immaculate Conception—one of the Catholic Church's most successful religious communities—presents a challenge of Biblical proportions. "We're getting busier and busier," remarks Charles Parise, manager of press operations. "The organization's growing." Print runs for the Congregation's religious materials have increased dramatically over the years as the