Delta Dental of Michigan Upgrades Digital Print, Bindery

In the past, when Delta Dental of Michigan Corporate Services printed booklets, the 16-employee in-plant would run them on an offset press, cut them to the right size and do the booklet making using the finishing unit of one of its monochrome printers.

“We would do thousands, and they would get outdated and we’d have to throw them away,” says Supervisor Todd Graham.

Today, thanks to the recent addition of a Xerox Color 1000 Press with in-line trimming and booklet making, the Okemos, Mich., in-plant produces those full-bleed booklets on demand, reducing waste and saving time. The new Color 1000 was part of a major equipment upgrade at the dental health plan administrator, which also included five Xerox Nuvera printers, a Xanté Ilumina envelope printer, a right angle attachment for the shop’s Baum folder and a Duplo DC-645 creaser.

“We have the support of our senior management for the in-plant,” says Graham, who made the case that the upgrades were an investment in the in-plant’s future. By getting the equipment all at once using a competitive bidding process, he was able to keep costs down.

The Color 1000 is a big step above the 65-page-per-minute Ikon color printer it replaced.

“One of the major things we struggled with was front-to-back registration,” Graham says. With the Color 1000, that registration is dead on.

“The quality has been phenomenal,” he says of the Color 1000. Being able to produce high-quality, quick-turnaround color has brought more work into the in-plant, he adds.

“We’re able to get our internal communications staff to allow us to run more [work] on it as a result of the increased quality,” he affirms.

The company holiday card was printed by the in-plant for the first time this year, thanks to its new capabilities.

Newsletters, which used to be printed offset and addressed on a monochrome printer, can now be printed and addressed on the Color 1000, saving time and effort. Graham is hoping to start printing business cards on the new printer soon.

“We were really needing to grow our digital capabilities,” says Graham. And now that the in-plant has, Delta Dental of Michigan is reaping the benefits.