Ricoh Corp.

Yesterday was a big day in Oxford, Miss. After 16 years as director of Printing and Graphic Services at the University of Mississippi, Tony Seaman retired. He handed off the reigns to long-time Associate Director Hilarie Bain. About 150 people attended a reception for Seaman yesterday in the Lyceum, the university’s first building, completed in 1848.

Commercial printer equipment installations and other news from Printing Impressions’ February 2013 edition, featuring Meredith-Webb Printing and Conquest Bindery.

Many of the industry's most prestigious exhibitors have signed on to showcase their latest industry solutions at the Graphics of the Americas Expo & Conference (GOA), being held February 21-23, 2013, at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, FL.

Ever since he arrived at Elon University three years ago as manager of Printing Services, Wesley Grigg has had one overriding mission: “My goal was to change it from a ‘copy shop’ to being a full service printer,” he says of his three-employee in-plant, based in Elon, N.C. With this in mind, his first move was to install a Ricoh Pro C900 in 2010 and start printing more of the university’s high-quality color printing. 

In December 2012, In-plant Graphics had an opportunity to visit Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG’s headquarters in Heidelberg, Germany, to talk with executives and tour the company’s massive press manufacturing facility in Wiesloch-Walldorf.

As he inches up on his retirement at the end of March, Joe Goss, director of Indiana University Document Services, has been readying his in-plant for a future without him. First he moved the 30-employee operation into a new facility last June, with improved workflow and closer proximity to the mail operation. Then, more recently, Goss oversaw the installation of two new Konica Minolta bizhub PRESS C7000 digital color printers, one with a booklet maker.

At Graph Expo, digital press vendors highlighted their workflow and digital front end capabilities, enabling everything from transpromotional and variable data printing to ganging of smaller jobs into longer production runs. The emphasis was on automation, personalization and run-length optimization.

The top new technology products in each of the Graph Expo 2012 Must See ’Ems categories were revealed at the close of the annual Executive Outlook conference that precedes the opening of the show.

Graph Expo starts on Sunday, and in-plants are expected to play a major part in the graphic arts trade show. As we've noted several times in recent weeks, the Chicago show will be packed with seminars exclusively for in-plants, along with receptions and networking opportunities. In-plant managers from all over the country are expected to be at the four-day event.

Since installing a new 61˝ HP Designjet L26500 wide-format printer in July, Tiger Graphic Services, at the University of Memphis, has more than doubled its growth. While the 11-employee in-plant is still using its nine-year-old HP 5500PSUV printer, Manager Penni Istre says that the new device was necessary to produce the shop’s oversized and corrugated signage work, which makes up about 35 percent of its business.