From the Editor: Lessons From the Past

By Bob Neubauer

I was paging through some 1989 editions of In-Plant Reproductions (the previous title of IPG) the other day, alternately shaking my head at how ugly the text-heavy black-and-white pages looked and amazed at how many different in-plants were mentioned from companies I had never heard of. One issue listed the top 50 aerospace and electronics in-plants. I couldn’t even name five today. If any of those 50 still have in-plants they’ve gone completely underground.

There was so much in-plant news back then that each issue featured an “Across the Nation” section with news from around the country. I learned that in early 1989 Boeing installed a new camera/projector; Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance bought a Xyvision electronic publishing system; Intelsat added a Ryobi 3302, a Macbeth viewing booth and an X-Rite densitometer; and perhaps most stunning of all, the IPMA installed “a facsimile machine” to stay on the cutting edge. You read it here first.

Condescension aside, it was fun to look back through the years at the thriving in-plant industry of the ’80s. Everyone was adding electronic prepress systems and boasting giddily about them. Our writer Ben Grey, whose passing we mourn this month, was in almost every issue, doling out advice and support. In-plants were upgrading to larger offset presses to bring more work in-house.

It was a different world back then, where in-plants were strong and vibrant, not living in fear of a shutdown. They were vocal about the number of pages they printed, the new iron they were adding, the money they were saving. Companies like Merck Pharmaceuticals, Phillips Petroleum and McDonnell Douglas were more than happy to boast about their in-plants to this magazine.

These days, the tendency is for large corporations with in-plants to keep them hush-hush, like a dark secret. I get turned down all the time in my quest to feature these companies’ in-plants in IPG. The large pharmaceutical, aerospace and retail in-plants have not all been shut down; they’re just staying silent, no longer allowed to brag of their accomplishments and money-saving benefits. The result is that the in-plant industry seems smaller and less significant now (and filled mostly with university in-plants, who are happy to have their operations featured).

With so many in-plants these days worried about “survival” and dodging the outsourcing demon, it would be refreshing if all of us could instead spend our time boasting about the many benefits in-plants provide that outside print vendors cannot — security, brand control, devotion to the parent company’s mission — and bolster these arguments with examples of the many large corporations that rely on in-plants. If only they would speak up. Because there are more of them out there than you think. They’re just keeping to themselves.

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Bob Neubauer Author's page Bob has served as editor of In-plant Impressions since October of 1994. Prior to that he served for three years as managing editor of Printing Impressions, a commercial printing publication. Mr. Neubauer is very active in the U.S. in-plant industry. He attends all the major in-plant conferences and has visited more than 180 in-plant operations around the world. He has given presentations to numerous in-plant groups in the U.S., Canada and Australia, including the Association of College and University Printers and the In-plant Printing and Mailing Association. He also coordinates the annual In-Print contest, co-sponsored by IPMA and In-plant Impressions.