Xerox Corp.

Offset may be the darling of today's printers, but it wasn't always. IPG has watched its progress for 50 years. HOW PRACTICAL is offset lithography for the in-plant shop? Twenty-five years after the defeat of letterpress, this question appeared in our March 1976 issue (then called Reproductions Review And Methods) in response to rising competition from the burgeoning copier industry. The answer then, and now, is the same: offset is very practical for in-plants. But this wasn't always so clear. For 50 years IPG has been covering offset lithography and bringing news of its advancements to our readers. The magazine owes

In part two of our Graph Expo report, we detail the latest advances in prepress, e-commerce, bindery and consumables. The recent Graph Expo show in Chicago drew more than 45,000 industry professionals to McCormick Place. Last month IPG took you there as we detailed many of the technologies on display, including direct imaging and digital printing innovations. But with nearly 575 exhibitors at the four-day event, we couldn't cover it all in one issue. So this month we're presenting even more Graph Expo highlights. Prepress Group Logic exhibited MassTransit, version 3.6, its high-speed digital file transfer and remote proofing software. MassTransit

Penn State University State College, Pa. Penn State Document Services faces a problem common to in-plants that lack the right of first refusal. If a department or professor needs a print job and they expect it to cost less than $5,000, they don't need to get bids on it. "They can just go to the print shop down the street because it's on the way home or their cousin's best friend works there, or whatever," laments Michael Pierick, director of Document Services. "We have to compete for every job, so we need to be concerned that every product and service line we provide

Yale University New Haven, Conn. Yale University provides its professors and students an environment that's unlikely to be matched at any other campus—and that includes the services provided by its in-plant. "In the academic world, we're unique in the wide range of services that we provide to our clients," says Richard Masotta, director of Yale's Reprographic and Imaging Services (RIS). That boast isn't mere sales talk. With roughly 100 employees and workspace at three locations on campus, RIS's myriad offerings range from graphic design and Web site development to copier maintenance and electronic, color, laser and offset printing. RIS also manages a technology

Cigna Printing and Distribution Charleston, S.C. If there's one thing John Panhorst doesn't want to do, it's get his hands dirty. Not that Panhorst, assistant vice-president of printing in Cigna's Printing and Distribution department, has a problem with working; he just knows that the in-plant runs a lot more smoothly and efficiently if people don't get in the way of the machines. "We've got our systems so automated that when an order comes in to ship 500 books, the whole thing drops into the demand print queue automatically," he says. "We don't interface with it at all, and frequently we put those

Amway Ada, Michigan. Amway—the little business that could—went from a basement office in 1959 to an estimated $5 billion in retail sales 40 years later. But to long-term employees like Mike King, director of paper products, Amway's success is no accident; it's a manifestation of the pure entrepreneurial spirit of Amway's two creators, Rich DeVos and Jay Van Andel. "In the beginning, everybody thought they were nutso," says King, with a chuckle. "They would drive somewhere to meet 150 people for a demonstration and three people would show up, but they were committed to their idea and they stuck with it." DeVos and Van

Texas Department of Health and Human Services Austin, Texas After years of fighting to keep his in-plant alive, Robert McDaniel has finally been able to spend some time focusing solely on improving his shop. Six years ago, the Texas Council on Competitive Government consolidated 31 state print shops in Travis County, in central Texas, into a mere nine shops. These in-plants, which lack right of first refusal, were also mandated to operate on a full cost recovery basis and forbidden from printing for any type of commercial operation. The result? They were left fighting each other and commercial print shops in a limited pool

Best Buy Minneapolis, Minn. When a business is able to grow from $160,000 in sales to over $7 million in less than a decade some people might attribute the success to a midnight deal with the devil—or at the very least a trade for some magic beans. But for Rick Fiebiger, director of Best Buy's 83-employee Print Solutions Group, all it took was focus and attention. "You really need to run your operation like you would if you were a commercial printer," declares Fiebiger. "You've got to earn the business, you have to provide top-notch service and you have to measure your contributions

Competition among insurance companies is fueling marketing efforts, forcing in-plants to turn out more four-color work than ever. Insurance is a huge market. Its providers make up a major portion of Fortune magazine's annual Fortune 500 listing, with giants like State Farm and Prudential ranking in the top 20. Behemoths like these know how important quality marketing materials are to their businesses, and many of them turn to their in-plants to get them. Because of the competition among insurance firms, these materials must be eye-catching and colorful, a fact that is bringing more color printing work into these in-plants. "Color will sell things

In-plants have found that showing off their capabilities to customers and senior management helps generate new business. Learn how UC-Berkeley went about it. One of our primary obstacles at University of California-Berkeley Printing Services has been exposure to, and physical presence with, our customers—and, more importantly, those qualified campuses and agencies with whom we should be doing business. U.C.-Berkeley Printing Services works for all nine U.C. campuses, three national laboratories (federally funded but administered by the university), several of the 20 California State Universities and a number of state agencies. Print buying within our system is not mandated; therefore, we must maintain