Xerox Corp.

Ted Bailey’s dedication to printing began at an early age. During his high school years in Ontario, Calif., Bailey, now manager of printing and graphic services at Boise State University, worked for a commercial printer, along with his brother, doing miscellaneous bindery work. After taking some graphic arts classes, he was hooked.

in 2008, Yale University decided to begin construction of a new Yale School of Management. Yale Printing & Publishing Services was located in a building that was scheduled for demolition. To determine whether outsourcing made sense, the university did a complete financial review of the in-plant. The study revealed that it would be more costly to close the shop and outsource than to move it.

Nearly 100 in-plant managers from 70 universities met in Harrisburg, Pa., this week, for the 47th annual Association of College & University Printers (ACUP) conference. The event, attended by IPG, was a great success, giving managers a non-stop opportunity to network, trade stories and share ideas.

IPG Editor Bob Neubauer joined a dozen or so university in-plant managers in Birmingham, Ala., for the annual Xerox Higher Education Customer Advisory Council Meeting.

Before adding a digital color press in 2010, Donna Cooper Horbelt says her in-plant at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) was not nearly as busy as she wanted it to be. "I was losing color copy business to everybody in town," recalls the director of Auxiliary Enterprises, Printing and Media Services. "Our quality just wasn't good enough."

At University of Washington Creative Communications, the in-plant's implementation of Lean production practices have been critical to its rapid financial turnaround from a $200,000 deficit to a $300,000 profit—a half-a-million-dollar swing from one fiscal year to the next.

Creating your own customized shop floor management system always seems like a great, inexpensive idea at first. But then the years stretch on, your IT staff turns over and support fades away. That was the scenario at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), where the 14-employee Reprographics department had been using an internally designed system based on IBM Lotus Domino since the late 1990s.

Next month, drupa 2012 will take over Düsseldorf, Germany. IPG asks industry observers David Zwang, Jim Hamilton, Noel Ward and Bill Lamparter what they expect to see there.

When she headed off to college in the early '80s, Lisa Hoover knew exactly where her studies would take her. "I wanted to be a TV news anchor," says Hoover, director of Bucknell University's Office of Publications, Print and Mail. "That's what I thought I was going to do. But I got sidetracked." That sidetrack has led to a rewarding graphic arts career and brought her to the director's chair at the nation's largest private liberal arts university, located in Lewisburg, Pa.

I just got back from a rather unique business trip. I went to Israel to cover HP's pre-drupa event and get a sneak preview of some of its cutting-edge technology. Not a bad deal, all things considered. It was a fantastic opportunity to see a part of the world I likely would never have gotten to visit.