IKON Office Solutions

Meeting the printing needs of a 2,100-student liberal arts college is tough enough with just three employees. But when your main digital color printer can’t keep up with the growing volume of work—and you still have two years left on the lease—it’s time to take serious action. After shutting down its offset presses for good last June and putting its trust in its Canon CLC 4000, Allegheny College Printing Services, in Meadville, Pa., saw volume on the machine skyrocket. Clicks jumped from 19,000 to more than 40,000 a month. Unfortunately, the number of service calls grew as well. So Manager Mark Pritchard talked

ABBAS BADANI is not afraid to be blunt when talking about his in-plant’s past performance. “There’s no question that the way it was, wasn’t really working,” says Badani, director of Pennsylvania State University’s Multimedia & Print Center (MPC), in University Park, Pa. In short, up until a few years ago, the in-plant was still staffed and equipped for 1970s-level production. It was losing business, expenses were rising, and most of the campus viewed it as merely another vendor, not as a core part of the university. “We were very stagnant, I think, for a while,” notes Mike Poorman, assistant director, who has been

SITUATED ON the banks of the Cape Fear River, Wilmington, N.C., is rich in both history and great food. It was also home to the 2005 Southeastern University Printing and Duplicating Managers Conference (SUPDMC), held in October. Hosted by Don Harty, manager of Printing Services at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, and Roland Falana, general manager of Office Products & Services at Duke University, this year's conference was also rich in education and entertainment. With approximately 60 in-plant representatives and 16 vendors in attendance, the conference focused on the changing face of printing. Sessions covered document management, in-plant closings (and how to prevent

Xplor 2003 brought MICR and one-to-one marketing to the forefront in Atlanta. By Mike Llewellyn The exhibitors at Xplor 2003 were upbeat, talking about a market rebound and new ways for the printing industry to gain a foothold as new media proliferates. While attendee figures were down compared with past Xplor conferences, most exhibitors felt that those who had arrived were there to do business. Continuing the show's tradition of education, companies like IBM Printing Systems and Océ set up their booths more like learning centers than equipment showcases. And with a greater focus on transactional printing and variable data, many companies rolled

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,

Twenty-four years after its first meeting, the National State Publishing Association returned to Carson City for one of its most ambitious conferences yet. The National State Publishing Association certainly has a loyal following. Not only did its recent conference in Carson City, Nev., draw 48 government in-plant representatives from 34 states, but more than a half dozen retired government printers showed up as well—from as far away as Alaska and Hawaii. Their trek to Nevada's state capital was well worth it, because Don Bailey, Nevada State Printer, together with his staff and the NSPA office staff, organized an activity-packed three-day event, blending education and

Are in-plants obsolete? The folks in charge of the 1998 On Demand Digital Printing & Publishing Strategy Conference seemed to want the world to think so. I attended this five-year-old event last month and was upset to hear a not-so-subtle message being repeatedly stressed to attendees: outsource your printing. Right from the opening keynote session, outsourcing was glorified. If you listened to speakers Frank Casale, of The Outsourcing Institute, and John Stuart, CEO of IKON Office Solutions, you would have thought that sending all printing to an outsourcing firm was the only viable path for a company to take. And that's