Konica Minolta Graphic Imaging U.S.A.

Commercial printer equipment installations and other news from Printing Impressions’ March 2013 edition, featuring Mele Printing.

When Robert Donahue started as director of purchasing at Franklin University, one of his goals was to revamp the mailing services operation and cut costs. His success there got him thinking about other ways to save money for the 111-year-old private university, based in Columbus, Ohio. In particular, he wondered how much the university was spending to outsource printing and whether the school could save money by getting equipment and printing that work in-house.

As early as 1923, The Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University recognized the benefit of having an in-house printing facility. However, several years ago, the shop found itself in a financial hole.

Tight budgets in Louisiana and the need for more on-demand printing have compelled the Office of State Printing to slim down and digitize. The slimming down came in October when staff reductions brought the Baton Rouge operation down to 20 full-time employees plus five student workers. The transition from offset to digital technologies followed closely after.

After being restricted from making any purchases for about two years, Steven Dimond, manager of MIT Copytech at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, knew what his first move would be when the buying ban was lifted. Last year, he made that move when his in-plant installed a Konica Minolta bizhub PRESS C8000 and a Konica Minolta bizhub PRO C6501.

It was a fairly routine day at Allegheny College Printing Services. Manager Mark Pritchard was talking with a customer when a popping noise made him turn and look toward his in-plant's Ikon CPP 650 color printer.

Rich Bauer, superintendent of Printing and Duplicating Services at Southern Illinois University, updated his Carbondale, Ill., in-plant with several pieces of new bindery equipment last year, including a Morgana DigiFold Pro creaser/folder, a Morgana CardXtra automatic business card slitter, Xyron 4400 laminator, a second Pitney Bowes DI 950 four-feeder tower with inserter, and a Konica Minolta bizhub PRESS 1250 with in-line finishing features.

For nearly 60 years, Villanova University Graphic Services operated out of one of the most unique facilities in the industry: an old house. Once a residence and later a dormitory, the building had 12 rooms, eight of which housed the in-plant's equipment and offices. A two-color Presstek/ABDick 9982 press filled one room; in another sat a Presstek Vector TX52 computer-to-plate system, a Xerox DocuColor 5000AP and a Canon imagePROGRAF iPF8300 wide-format printer; the bindery and shipping departments were in the garage.

Helping customers save time and money is every in-plant's mission. So when Sun Life Financial's Document Services Group discovered that a department was hiring temps to manually stuff envelopes—and taking a week to 10 days to do it—John Moschilli had to take action.

Equipped with an arsenal of digital printing and high-tech inserting gear, the 42-employee print and mail operation at Physicians Mutual processes between 30 and 35 million mail pieces a year for the health and life insurance company.