AI in the In-plant: Start Small, Win Big

Every in‐plant manager knows artificial intelligence (AI) is the next big thing — yet many of them are still standing on the sidelines wondering, “Where do I even start?”

If you’ve been dragging your feet, you’re not alone. The good news? Starting small is not only okay, it’s smart.

Credit: Getty Images by Vertigo3d

For many managers, the first foray into AI has been in refining communications — emails, presentations, internal memos, and marketing messages. This type of usage is low-risk, quick to implement, and highly effective.

“Basically, we just use it as a way to improve what we want to say,” notes Nathan Thole, director of Printing Services at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa.

Some are using ChatGPT to improve presentation slide decks and fine-tune email messages for clarity and impact. Others use ChatGPT to read long emails, summarize them, and create insightful questions to ask the sender. Some have AI join them on Teams meetings, provide an instant transcript, and create a follow-up email for participants that highlights key points of discussion. These are basic steps, but they serve as gateways to more advanced applications.

AI as Your Personal Copy Editor

Dwayne Magee

For Dwayne Magee, director of Messiah Press at Messiah University in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, AI has become an indispensable communication tool. He uses ChatGPT to draft everything from departmental updates and expense justifications to annual goals and even intern schedules.

In one example, he had ChatGPT draft a community announcement about an employee’s new USPS certification. The result? A polished, professional write-up that highlighted institutional excellence. He’s also used it to articulate expense justifications, citing service documentation and operational impact — an often time-consuming task that AI makes much more manageable.

Magee says if he were to hire an intern or a new operator, he could easily ask ChatGPT for help drafting a schedule for that person’s first day, then tweak the result — a big time saver over planning the schedule himself.

“It’s like having a personal secretary,” says Magee. “Start with your ideas or needs and then work back and forth.”

Creating Business Plans

Laura Lockett

At Sacramento State, Laura Lockett, former director of University Print & Mail (she retired July 31), has used AI to analyze data and even help create business plans.

“I will feed two viewpoints for something into a prompt and ask it to analyze and create a cohesive summary or draft pros and cons for further analysis,” she says.

She recently solicited comments from higher-ed peers about expanding services, fed the responses into an AI tool, and asked it to analyze and draft a business plan, which she then modified.

At Bloomberg Ink, in Dayton, New Jersey, Colleen Seiler came up with a way to use the in-plant’s production data, exported into Excel documents, to build a Power Business Intelligence (BI) dashboard that presents this data in a user-friendly, visually impactful manner, allowing the shop to tell its story in a way that broader audiences can understand.

Some printers are even using AI to tailor messages to individual clients. At PRINTING United Alliance’s AI Innovation for Print Leaders workshop during IMAGINE AI, one print company president said he uses a plug-in called Crystal Knows, which analyzes LinkedIn profiles to get personality insights. Those are then fed into ChatGPT to generate personalized marketing messages based on communication style, helping increase job win rates. At the same event, another printer described a project in which AI processed 500 images in just 42 minutes, cropping and preparing them for print, a task that would have taken a junior designer three days.

Some managers are using AI to write performance evaluations. After drafting a summary statement for a category, they ask Co-pilot to rephrase it with a specific tone tailored to that individual. The results are more polished, and written differently for multiple employees who do the same type of job.

Printers are using AI to analyze customer data and show them trends they hadn’t noticed; to improve the design of forms; and to seek advice on how to get through to difficult employees. They’re detailing their workflow constraints and asking AI for suggestions. If roadblocks or time-consuming tasks are impeding your ability to run your in-plant, think about using AI tools to suggest solutions.

Beyond Basics: AI in Print Production

Once comfortable with AI-enhanced communication, some in-plants are moving into more powerful applications that directly impact production efficiency, quality, and speed.

Sarah Vickers

Sarah Vickers, senior administrator of Printing and Mail Services at Orange County Public Schools in Orlando, Florida, has used AI to develop standard operating procedures (SOPs). By uploading equipment manuals and safety documentation, she prompted AI to generate consistent SOPs that only required light editing.

“Definitely a time saver,” Vickers notes.

She also used tools like Canva for quick poster creation—showing how AI can aid both safety and creativity.

Mike Puckett

At Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, Mike Puckett, director of Printing Services, used ChatGPT for an innovative wall graphic project. By uploading a photo of a wooden wall and adding sizing and design instructions, he received a printable template that mimicked the original wall design. The final product, printed on foamcore and layered to create dimension, turned a photo into a visually striking 3D installation for a podcast studio.

Philip Poelmans

Few in-plants are as expansive in their AI use as McMaster University Media Production Services (MPS) in Hamilton, Ontario. Over the past two years, MPS has used AI in several areas of the department, notes Director Philip Poelmans.

• Image Enhancement: Tools like Topaz Gigapixel AI and Adobe Firefly help upscale images, extend backgrounds, and even make objects disappear for cleaner layouts.
• Generative Design: Adobe Photoshop’s Generative Fill allows his team to seamlessly expand images or design mockups from scratch.
• Content Creation: AI has created poems, placeholder website content, and more.
• Workflow Optimization: Predictive AI tools like Xerox Fleet Consumable Management automate toner replenishment and analyze fleet usage across campus.

“We’ve been using AI increasingly over the past two years,” Poelmans says. “We have a small but mighty team. By integrating AI into various aspects of our operations, we're able to streamline processes and amplify our collective efforts.”

Text-to-Image in Layout Tools

Tom Licata, Print Shop Supervisor at Rochester City School District in Rochester, New York, is using Adobe InDesign’s built-in AI tool to generate images based on text prompts. While this may sound minor, it’s an incredibly fast way to develop original visuals without needing outside illustration support — perfect for schools or public institutions with lean design teams.

Though Sacramento State’s in-plant has also been using Adobes AI tools to help with concepting and variations, Director Laura Lockett notes that designers have a love/hate relationship with AI since they would prefer to use their own creativity.

“Designers want the end product to come from their own skill set and not AI’s interpretation,” she says. “The flip side is, being short staffed and under deadline, having the ability to create prompts and generate variations expedites the process and helps [select] ideas to home in on.”

Some other AI ideas suggested by managers:

• Implementing a new Print MIS can take more than a year. AI can take the data from an existing MIS and help translate it for the new MIS, reducing implementation time.
• To help meet ADA accessibility requirements, AI can go through templates on a Web-to-print system and automate the process.
• One in-plant that is reorganizing its shop floor wants to use AI to provide an optimum lean layout after feeding in a process map of its workflow, the floor layout, and its equipment list.
• Some are even considering robotics to move paper, reducing the risk of injury from having employees do that work and speeding up the process.

If you’re still not using AI, you’re not alone — but you are behind. The longer you wait, the more you risk being left out of a fundamental shift in how print operations are run.

The best place to begin? Start with a problem. Don’t try to boil the ocean. Pick one pain point. Use this prompt in ChatGPT: “I’m struggling with [X]. How can AI help me?”

Whether it’s drafting a department report, optimizing a workflow, or building a wall mural, AI offers solutions that can scale with your comfort level and ambition. And with real in-plants showing the way — from Messiah University to McMaster — there’s no shortage of inspiration. So, take the first step. AI isn’t the future, it’s your present. And it’s time to embrace it.

ChatGPT was used extensively in the writing of this article.