From the Editor: The Managers Behind the In-plants
THROUGHOUT MY years as editor of IPG, what I’ve enjoyed most has been meeting the managers who make up this industry. I’ve found them to be extremely approachable and accommodating, and I count many of them among my friends.
One man I’ve run into at conferences a few times over the years is Wes Friesen, who oversees Portland General Electric’s in-plant. Our last meeting, at the TransPromo Summit in New York, inspired me to pursue a feature story about his printing operation. Imagine my surprise when I learned I wasn’t the only one impressed with his in-plant.
NAPL has just announced that PGE earned a 2007 NAPL Management Plus Gold Award for print management excellence. I couldn’t be happier for Wes and his crew. Though I haven’t yet had the chance to visit PGE, I’m impressed, as I’m sure you’ll be, with what this in-plant is accomplishing and with its plans to move into transpromo printing.
One in-plant I did (finally) get to visit is World Bank. I had been talking to Manager Jane Bloodworth for more than a year about visiting, and I finally carried out my threat last month. Jane arrived at World Bank in the mid-’90s and has overseen the in-plant’s progression from a black-and-white shop to an award-winning digital color operation. With 67 employees and $10.6 million in sales, her Printing, Graphics and Map Design unit is one of country’s largest in-plants, and she proudly gave me a tour.
The highlights were its two Kodak NexPress digital printers, its roll-fed Océ VS 9220 with inline folding and stitching, its Presstek 52 DI press and its Harris web press. World Bank is one of the few in-plants using JDF technology to preset equipment, and Jane told me of her plans to expand the use of JDF. At the time of my visit, the in-plant had almost finished upgrading its Avanti system to include Avanti’s Web ordering capabilities.
While in Washington, I also visited the subject of this month’s manager profile, Wilma Grant, who has overseen the U.S. Supreme Court’s in-plant for almost three decades. I met Wilma years ago and see her periodically at events like the recent Digital Printing in Government forum. She was just bubbling with energy and enthusiasm on my recent visit, and her pride in her department was evident as she showed me around both her office and the Supreme Court itself. (One bit of trivia I learned: each justice has a spittoon, a holdover from the glory days of spitting. I didn’t actually get to see the spittoons, to my eternal regret, but I did get a peek at the real “highest court in the land”—the basketball court above the courtroom.)
Wilma was an excellent hostess, with many stories to tell, in her Scottish accent. She’s a dedicated hard worker whose efforts not only help the Supreme Court to function but serve the interests of the entire country. I regret that we couldn’t fit more of her story into this issue, but we did put the full-length version on our Web site. It’s a fascinating profile that you won’t regret taking the time to read.
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 200 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.
