Xerox Corp.

Merging with their organizations' mail operations has made these in-plants indispensable. by Mike Llewellyn IF YOU weren't watching, you wouldn't have caught it. Four years ago Carl Johnson's supervisor, who was in charge of the mailing operation, was relocated. It was a small change—a barely noticeable shift in the architecture of Nevada's Washoe County government. But before Johnson knew it, the move had permanently altered the scope of his in-plant. He was given responsibility for the mail operation. The first thing he did as supervisor of mail and reprographics was roll up his sleeves and figure out what kind of equipment he needed. "We

An unexpected Spring snowstorm and a down economy couldn't keep attendees from crowding the 10th annual On Demand show. By Bob Neubauer and Mike Llewellyn Despite a surprise spring snowfall that blanketed New York City and weakened first-day attendance, the 10th annual On Demand Digital Printing & Publishing Conference went on as usual early last month. The exhibit hall at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center seemed much larger this year, due in part to On Demand's co-location with the AIIM Conference & Exposition. As a result, there were 438 exhibitors, compared with 150+ at last year's show. By the event's second day,

Competition among the major digital color printing vendors is tougher than ever. In-plants, as luck would have it, are caught in the crossfire. by Mike Llewellyn FOR ANY large organization, if they're saying 'I need this job now,' they're going to want to send it to an in-plant," declares Abby Abhyankar, vice president for integrated marketing at Xerox. "In-plants represent short runs with fast response times and no compromises on quality." That's not news to in-plant managers, whose job it is to make sure their shops offer the highest speed at the lowest price. But it is making headlines at companies like

A strong focus on customers, along with expertise in process color printing and online ordering, have built University of Missouri-Columbia Printing Services into an in-plant powerhouse. by Bob Neubauer Not many in-plants can lay claim to a six-color press—let alone two of them. But when you're the largest printing operation in a city of 84,500, the big jobs have a way of finding you. With 105 full- and part-time employees, University of Missouri-Columbia Printing Services is not only a local printing giant, but one of the top in-plants in the country. It ranked 27th on the recent IPG Top 50, and boasted sales of

At the recent IPG Conference and Expo in the Big Apple, in-plant managers wanted fresh ideas for dealing with tough times. by Mike Llewellyn CHANGE WAS on everyone's mind at the recent In-Plant Graphics Conference and Expo. Whether that meant breaking into digital technology or rolling with the punches in a down economy, most in-plant managers in attendance wanted to know what they should do differently to stay ahead of the curve. The turnout was solid at the debut of the IPG Conference in midtown Manhattan last month. Held in conjunction with the established BookTech show, it featured an exhibition of more than

Back in October 2002, Canon USA released its CLC 3900 (now 3900+), a copier/printer turning out 39 pages per minute (ppm) in either color or black and white. The 3900 is a slightly-less-robust addition to a product line that includes Canon's CLC 5000, a production-level copier/printer producing 50 ppm. At the time, Mason Olds, the company's then-general manager for the color systems division, claimed, "This product has no direct competition right now." Jump to February, 2003: Xerox goes head-to-head with Canon with the release of the Xerox 3535, pushing 35 ppm in either black and white or color. Until that late-winter release, Canon

From road construction to university printing, Joe Goss' customer service skills have served him well. by Bob Neubauer "No previous printing experience needed." Those were the words on the job notice that caught Joe Goss' eye back in 1985. After 12 years in the road construction business, he was starting to wonder about his future. The slumping economy was taking its toll on business. Figuring he had nothing to lose, Goss applied for the job as director of Indiana University Printing Services, in Bloomington. Much to his surprise, he was called for an interview. That interview revealed that the in-plant, though very proficient

Every Boy Scout knows the words "Be Prepared." This motto has also driven Robert Mettee to keep the BSA in-plant a step ahead. by Bob Neubauer If everything had gone as planned, Robert Mettee might be an auto mechanic right now. But fate—and his fellow students at the Baltimore vocational technical school he attended—sent him hiking down a different trail. "I was trying to get in the automotive class, and that filled up," he recalls. "My second alternative was printing." So he signed up—and quickly discovered he had a knack for it. "I graduated at the top of my printing class," Mettee

When you work for Sunkist, it's pretty important to be able to print the color orange. That was one of the first things Tim Criswell realized five years ago after he was hired to run the in-plant at Sunkist Growers, in Sherman Oaks, Calif. At the time, the small shop was printing only forms and stationery. Everything that featured Sunkist's five-color logo had to be printed outside. This irked Criswell. He wanted to print that logo. "That, to me, was easy growth," he says. So he traded an unneeded collator for a used one-color Heidelberg KORD and went to work. Customers had

"In college you learn management skills from a book. In the Navy you get hands-on experience dealing with many different types of people in very stressful situations," says Jimmy Robinson, printing department director at the University of West Alabama. Drawing from the leadership skills he learned as print shop supervisor aboard the USS Kitty Hawk (and the strategies he read in college), Robinson has spent 19 years building this small southern in-plant into a seasoned survivor responsible for 95 percent of all the work printed by the university. Technology, quality and efficiency, he says are the focus areas that will keep an in-plant alive.