Xerox Corp.

Ursula Burns, president of Xerox, will give the keynote address to kick off the 32nd annual National Government Publishing Association conference, just 10 days from today. The event, taking place in Bellvue, Wash., is being hosted by the Washington State Department of Printing. The conference will start with an opening reception on October 19, giving government printers from all over the country a chance to mingle. After Burns’ keynote the next morning, Wes Friesen, in-plant manager at Portland Gas & Electric, will give a presentation titled “Successfully Managing In-House Operations.” Then, Patricia Fritz, associate chief of staff for strategic environmental programs for the Government

A GOOD PRODUCTION workflow is one of the main factors in meeting deadlines and profitability. Historically, the answer to creating an effective workflow has been to throw people at it. Not only is that expensive, but with the increasing complexity of the tools and processes required, it demands very skilled operators. And finding and training these operators can be a big challenge in itself. Now, automating everything is not always practical. For example, any process that requires some subjective decision making is not usually suited to automation; however, we should be using technology to replace many of those predetermined and repetitive tasks. That is

When IPG wrote about Colonial Life & Accident Insurance Co. in May of 1994, its in-plant was in the midst of a major forms management initiative. The Columbia, S.C., shop was moving its forms printing from offset presses to a new Xerox DocuTech and had come up with a groundbreaking solution where forms were stored as PostScript files on a server and printed on demand. Upper management was excited about the new DocuTech. The in-plant was looking forward to reducing warehouse inventory. All signs pointed to a successful future for the in-plant. Then came some unexpected curve balls. First, Colonial Life was

Prepress Agfa will debut its chemistry-free thermal digital plate, the ThermoFuse-based Azura TS. It features an advanced clean-out system and improved contrast for easier visual inspections and offers higher throughput of up to 50 percent or 100,000 impressions. Agfa’s ThermoFuse technology physically bonds images to the plate without chemical processing. PlateWriter 2000, an ink-jet system designed for small- to medium-format offset printing, will be shown by Glunz & Jensen. The system jets a Liquid Dot solution onto non-photosensitive aluminium plates. The imaged plates are then manually fed through a finishing unit that dries them and bonds the liquid dots. Heidelberg will demonstrate Prinect Inpress

University in-plant managers gathered this past spring in Clearwater for the ACUP 2008 conference.

The Printing Industry of Illinois/Indiana Association (PII) is offering an exciting educational opportunity for industry professionals that will focus on many business- and strategy-related industry issues, including sustainable and green printing practices. PII’s Day of Results will take place September 17 from 8 a.m. - 4 p.m. at the Westin Chicago Northwest in Itasca. One of the main focuses will be on green, sustainable printing. Gary Jones of the Printing Industries of America (PIA/GATF), will give the keynote luncheon address on the topic “How is the Printing Industry Responding to Sustainability?” In it, he will reveal the purpose, goals and requirements of the

IPMA President Debbie Pavletich and In-Plant Graphics Editor Bob Neubauer will facilitate a special breakfast session at Graph Expo. Titled “Digital Printing through the Eyes of an In-Plant Printer,” it will take place Tuesday, October 28, from 8:30-10 a.m. The topics have now been selected:  • How to Cost Justify a Digital Press: Xerox will show how to calculate ROI and savings versus outsourcing the work, as well as  discuss digital vs. offset break-even points and the volumes best suited to a digital press. • How to Market Digital Printing to Customers: Ricoh will show how to get customers excited about the possibilities so

So much work had been flooding into one school district in-plant that the manager knew something had to be done. Test booklets, recruitment brochures, covers for student handbooks and many other items were testing the limits of the eight-employee in-plant’s equipment. To handle the work, the shop recently added a long list of new equipment—including a Xerox iGen3—and built a 3,000-square-foot addition to house it all. New on the shop floor are: • A Xerox iGen3 90 digital color press • A second Kodak Digimaster 9110 with an inline bookletmaker • A C.P. Bourg bookletmaker for the shop’s other 9110 • Two Konica Minolta

“We had one of the first DocuColors.” There was a time when Kevin Field might have been bragging when he said that. But 15 years have taken their toll on that Xerox DocuColor 40, as they have on all of his in-plant’s aging Xerox printers. So recently, Print & Mail Services for the City and Schools of Virginia Beach replaced those printers with a host of newer, faster devices. New on the shop floor are a Xerox DocuColor 260, two DocuTech 6135s (one with a square fold booklet maker) and a Xerox 128 highlight color device, which went into the data center.

Last month’s TransPromo Summit in New York was certainly upbeat in its predictions for this new marketing technique. Keynote Speaker Barb Pellow, of InfoTrends, pointed to data predicting a 68 percent compound annual growth rate for transpromo over the next four years. Most of the speakers backed this up with case studies and research indicating that customers are receptive to reading relevant marketing messages on their statements and bills. The 300 vendors, marketers and printers in attendance were certainly primed to hear this. They received numerous tips on how to initiate and carry out transpromo campaigns. Dozens of vendors were on hand to discuss