March 2007 Issue
A New Age of Print in San Diego
SAN DIEGO State University is an academically rich, urban university with more than 34,000 students, award-winning professors, top-notch research facilities and a location that serves as the gateway to Latin America. Like most universities—especially in California—SDSU is also very conscious of its environmental footprint and constantly monitors and works to reduce its impact on the environment. In April of 2005, the university hired Leslie Rutledge to transform its in-plant, ReproGraphic Services. Her years of employment with commercial printers and graphic arts vendors made her the right person for the challenge. “When I walked in the door on April 4, 2005, which is one
College Shop Gets Digital Overhaul
IN-PLANT UPGRADES come a lot more easily when your organization’s marketing department is pushing for them. Take the Community College of Philadelphia (CCP), for example. For years the Central Duplicating department had been getting by with aging Itek, Multi and A.B.Dick duplicators, with barely a dime of investment money coming from the school. But as CCP kicked off a new branding and marketing campaign, the benefits of print-on-demand and variable data printing—and the role they could play in the school’s recruitment efforts—became obvious. This realization prompted the college to install a remanufactured Kodak NexPress 2100 with a fifth unit for adding clear gloss or
Digital Color: What a Difference A Decade Makes
DIGITAL COLOR was introduced to the marketplace more than a decade ago. Indigo and Xeikon unveiled key new products in the mid-1990s, and early projections were that these technologies would take off. Initially, as with a number of new technologies, there were technical issues. Presses were unreliable; ink and toner didn’t stick to the paper; and the cost of consumables was too high to generate any substantial application transfer from offset technology. Today, Indigo has been taken over by Hewlett Packard. Xeikon faced bankruptcy before being acquired by Punch Technologies. Kodak bought out Heidelberg’s share of NexPress. Ink and toner are now sticking
EFI Brings Seminar to Times Square
EFI hosted a half-day seminar in New York City specifically geared toward in-plants. The goal was to show them how a Web-to-print workflow in the form of a digital storefront can make their in-plants stronger by making it easier for customers to work with them. (See a video of this seminar in the Video section of our home page.) Held in an office overlooking Times Square, the seminar also stressed how the data collected in the job submission process can be integrated with an MIS system to let in-plants evaluate jobs and give customers personalized feedback. To illustrate how a digital storefront can benefit an in-plant,
From the Editor: Out and About
SOMETIMES IT seems I’m chained to this desk, “observing” the industry through e-mails and Web sites. So I like to break away now and then to see for myself what’s happening in the world’s in-plants. Recently I caught a train up to New York to do just that. On a frigid winter day I walked through a sea of scarves and hats to the United Nations’ headquarters to visit one of the largest in-plants out there. Paul Kazarov, chief of the Publishing Section, took me for a walk through the U.N.’s vast underground in-plant, filled with just about every type of printing and binding
From Theology to Technology
AS MANAGER of UCSD Imprints, the 14-employee in-plant for the University of California-San Diego, Larry Fox has spent the past 12 years expanding and digitizing his operation to better serve the university’s 21,000 students and 20,000 faculty and staff. The university has taken notice. For the past five years, the in-plant has been awarded the Business Affairs Customer Satisfaction award for its copier management and printing services. Born and raised in eastern Colorado, Fox attended Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Okla. He earned a degree in Theology with a Biblical Studies major and a minor in German. After college, he spent a
In-Plants and POD: Ahead of the Curve
ACCORDING TO acronymfinder.com there are 89 published definitions for POD. “Print On Demand” ranks number 7 in popularity. (For what it’s worth, #6 is “Probability Of Damage” and #8 is “Payable On Death.” Number one, not surprisingly, is “Proof Of Delivery.”) As to the On Demand part, everything is OD these days: movies, music, weather, news, banking, and yes, there’s even Howard Stern On Demand (this author has restrained himself from commentary). Though the term is overused, it denotes anything immediately accessible. Our now-omnipresent resource library Wikipedia states; “Print on demand or publish on demand (POD) is a publishing methodology in which a
In-plants: The Next Generation
THE IN-PLANT has evolved to become a knowledge disseminator—a unit within an organization that provides value by enhancing the process in which knowledge is communicated. This fact, however, remains unbeknownst to the very hierarchy that drives the organization because in-plants find it difficult to communicate with executive level management. Similarly, the role of the in-plant has been shifting. In the past, its primary concern was placing marks on paper. Now, however, it archives and manages files and provides file access for reprint needs. Where in-plants are generally lacking is in their ability to tag, archive, manage and make accessible all files, images, data
John Jay College Goes CTP
A new Xanté PlateMaker5 is making life easier for Mario De Leon and his team at John Jay College in New York City. Gone is the smell of processing chemicals in this five-employee in-plant, since the new platesetter is chemistry free. IPG Editor Bob Neubauer visited this 10th Avenue in-plant recently and talked with acting manager De Leon about the shop’s transition to a computer-to-plate workflow. Plates from the PlateMaker5 are used on the in-plant’s one-color Itek 9510 and Hamada 600 presses, and De Leon reports improved quality and speed on its forms, letterhead and envelopes as a result. The PlateMaker5, he said, has
On Demand, Boston Style
After two years in Philadelphia, the On Demand Conference & Expo is moving to Boston. Co-located with the AIIM Conference & Expo, On Demand will take place at the Boston Convention & Exposition Center from April 16-19. On Demand is produced by Questex Media Group in conjunction with InfoTrends, a research and strategic consulting firm. Keynote speakers this year will be: w Arkadi Kuhlmann, chairman, president and CEO of ING Direct USA w John Schwarz, CEO of Business Objects w Jeff Teper, corporate vice president, Office Business Platform Microsoft w Stephen J. Dubner, international bestselling author w Charles A. Pesko, president
Perfect Binding Gives Oregon In-plant an Edge
PERFECT BINDING isn’t a service you see in many in-plants. In fact, IPG data shows that just 31 percent have perfect binders, and much of that is desktop equipment. Still, those that offer this service say it’s a big customer pleaser. “People are pretty tired of saddle stitching sometimes,” remarks Mark Dixon, assistant director of Printing and Mailing Services at the University of Oregon. The 39-employee in-plant has had a
University of Arkansas Installs Xerox iGen3
Getting approval for a Xerox iGen3 wasn’t the hard part. Nor was the installation of the digital color press. “The education [of customers] is what I’m finding will be our greatest challenge,” reveals Rich Bundsgaard, director of Print Mail Copy Solutions at the University of Arkansas. Specifically, he added, the 50-employee in-plant has to show customers how high-quality color work from the iGen3 can help them do their jobs better. Since its installation just before Christmas, the iGen3 has been churning out on-demand color books and full-color course packs for professors who see the benefits (and cost effectiveness) of digital color. To keep the digital
Warning: A Copyright Policy Isn’t Enough!
IN MARCH 2006, Cornell University received a letter of complaint from the Association of American Publishers (AAP) “concerning alleged copyright violations.”* The letter, preliminary to a lawsuit, made it clear to the president and the provost of the university that a joint meeting might produce remedies to divert litigation. For many years, Cornell had copyright guidelines posted and an active electronic reserves service. Cornell also had no less than three university policies that addressed copyright infringement issues, including Responsible Use of Electronic Communications, Code of Academic Integrity and Code of Conduct. In spite of this evidence of the administration’s support for the protection of
