Xerox Corp.

At Tyson Foods, Inc., all management personnel, including CEO Donnie Smith, are birds of a uniform feather. "We all wear khaki to show that we are working managers and not afraid to get our hands dirty," reports Russell Gayer, manager of Tyson Printing Services (TPS).

To keep Michigan Farm Bureau's Printing Services operation running efficiently and effectively, Karen Meyers depends on Avanti's Graphic Arts Management System. Its estimating, order entry, inventory management and reporting modules, as well as Avanti's eAccess Web-to-print software, have streamlined the in-plant.

As communications leader for print production at Kohler Co., Christopher Donlon has his hands full. Each year, Donlon's team uses its array of Xerox equipment to produce millions of finished printed products in support of Kohler, best known as a manufacturer of plumbing products.

Chelle Palmer was going about her day at the Richland School District Print Shop, in Richland, Wash., last month when the phone rang. It was local TV station KNDO. They wanted to send over a TV crew to do a story about her in-plant—in 15 minutes.

As new business models continue to emerge across the dynamic media landscape, in-plants have an opportunity to take a leadership role in reinforcing their strategic relevance. And some of their best opportunities are in capturing new revenues from insourcing, and developing new services by outsourcing and partnering with external firms.

In-plant Graphics visited the State of Colorado's award-winning Integrated Document Solutions operation for a look at its advanced printing and mailing technologies.

It was hard for in-plant managers not to feel special at Graph Expo this year. After years of being included seemingly as an afterthought, in-plants were given the spotlight this time around, with numerous sessions focusing specifically on in-plant issues and a new networking hub called "The InPlant Place" where they could gather and mingle. Some vendors set aside special areas devoted to solutions for in-plants, and one (Rochester Software Associates) offered daily in-plant networking receptions.

Times are good at the University of Washington. Its Creative Communications operation ended its fiscal year on June 30 $200,000 in the black—the second year in a row that the 90-employee operation has earned a profit.

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.

Producing booklets has gotten a whole lot easier at Westat since the employee-owned research firm’s in-plant installed a new Duplo System 5000 collating/booklet making system. 

“We purchased the booklet maker because we produce a lot of booklets, and not all of our machines had finishing capabilities on them,” reports Ezra Schneider, manager of the eight-employee Reproduction and Copy Services department.