Xerox Corp.

Continuous-feed inkjet offers advantages over both offset and electrophotography. As the technology evolves, it is gaining share from both. The presses are good. The substrates are good. The software is good. And, as Cathy Cartolano, vice president of sales and technical services at Mitsubishi Imaging (MPM), points out, image quality is "scary close" to offset.

As your customers ask for increasingly more of their jobs in smaller quantities, how are you managing the increased workload in prepress while still keeping your presses printing? As your management asks for yet another round of cost cutting, where do you squeeze this time? And as your customers move to digital campaigns and use print more selectively, what is your in-plant doing to stay relevant?

Is our department in the right business? Even though we are giving our customers the products they need today, are we paying attention to what they will need tomorrow? If not, what do we need to do to help them?

Sometimes “temporary” can last a long time. For 32 years, the in-plant at California State University-Fullerton was housed in a “temporary” location on the north side of campus. This past summer, the long wait for new digs finally ended when the in-plant’s printing operation was relocated to the second floor of the library in the center of campus.

Over the past 25 years, Printing Services at The University of West Alabama has not added a single employee. Yet, according to Director Jimmy Robinson, the workload has increased tenfold. “So we have to get machines that are able to do things faster,” he says.

"I wanted to be a graphic designer when I started out," reflects Karen Meyers, business manager of Printing Services at Michigan Farm Bureau. Enthralled by a high school graphic arts course, the Grand Rapids, Mich., native enrolled at Central Michigan University, where she majored in industrial supervision and management with a graphics concentration. While at CMU, Meyers took an internship with The Planning and Zoning Center where she helped lay out newsletters during school breaks.

The U.S. Navy has awarded Xerox a 10-year contract worth $94 million for the onboard document needs of its vessels worldwide. The Navy will look to Xerox for the installation, training and supplies procurement of the multifunction printers (MFPs) and production devices across its fleet.

Written in a bold hand on a glass slide was the date and location: 10-22-38 Astoria. The copy might have been fuzzy, but it was still a copy. In fact, it was the world’s first xerographic copy.

Anyone who thinks in-plants are in decline should have been tagging along with me the past two weeks. Between PRINT 13 and the Southeastern Printing and Digital Managers Conference (SUPDMC) a week later, I've lost count of the number of managers I've seen. So heavy was the in-plant participation at PRINT 13 that I could not cross the trade show floor without spotting a manager.

Autumn should prove to be an exciting season at the Wisconsin Department of Administration’s Bureau of Publishing and Distribution. The all-digital, 60-employee shop, located in the state capital of Madison, is moving into a new facility this month. And, as temperatures outside begin to drop and leaves start to fall, the in-plant will be busy enhancing its new digs with fresh equipment and other improvements to help customers fulfill their printing and mailing needs.