Texas In-plant Roundup

Despite temperatures in the mid 90s, attendees were full of energy as they networked and shared stories, using their experiences to help one another out. They spent time in the vendor exhibit area, toured UT Austin Document Solutions, enjoyed some excellent meals (including a trip to the locally famous Salt Lick barbeque restaurant) and attended three days of excellent sessions. Among the highlights:

• Gary Williford, retired manager of the University of Tennessee’s in-plant, asked attendees to draw posters depicting what they do as managers, with humorous and insightful results.
• Jack Williams, current manager of the University of Tennessee’s Graphic Arts Services operation, related his experiences after his board of trustees told him to solicit proposals from outside vendors for the possible outsourcing of his in-plant.
• Conference host Richard Beto, director of Document Solutions at UT Austin, described his own experiences when an outsourcing provider pitched a high-level administrator on taking over his mail delivery operation (without any mail experience).
• Ed Danielczyk, president of Business eXcellence Consulting, showed managers the type of language and arguments that outsourcing companies are using to convince their administrators to outsource printing.
• Howie Fenton, NAPL senior consultant, gave two sessions, one on new technologies, such as inkjet, that in-plants should be watching, and another on benchmarking.
• Chris Reich, CEO of TeachU, talked about the concept of Game Theory, and how to get what you want by maximizing the payoff for both sides in a negotiation.
• Kristel Foster and Jeff May, of QuadWilliamson showed examples of image recognition (IR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies to demonstrate the importance of making printed pieces interactive.

Read the full report on SUPDMC 2013 in an upcoming issue of IPG.