SOMETIMES ACCIDENTS help you discover a new use for an old machine. Ron Lindgren, manager of Quality Impressions—the in-plant for Avada Hearing Care, in Beaver Dam, Wis.—says his in-plant once ended up with a half-million misprinted envelopes because the wrong original was chosen before printing. To fix the foul-up, the shop designed and printed custom labels, then used its Secap Jet 1 Tabber to position those labels and recover the envelopes. “Without that machine, 500,000 envelopes would have had to be trashed,” he reveals. That’s not to say the 18-month-old Jet 1 Tabber isn’t useful under normal circum
W. Eric Martin
TO AVOID problems with superstitious tenants and workers, most landlords skip past 13 when numbering the floors in their buildings. Not so with the offices of HCR ManorCare, a provider of short- and long-term skilled nursing and rehabilitation, headquartered in Toledo, Ohio. The two-employee Document Center is located on the 13th floor, where it shares space with the company’s data center. Both departments report to the manager of Production Services. The in-plant and data center have a unique arrangement. The in-plant uses the print room on the first shift to produce items like flyers, newsletters, postcards, HR materials, manuals and training materials, and then
IF YOU’VE been studying your supply bills, you’ve probably noticed increases in raw material costs over the past few years that have easily outpaced inflation. Are your raw material suppliers taking advantage of you? Not at all—they’re seeing their own costs rise as well, often at astronomical rates. While the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 18 percent from 2000 to October 2006—a rate of roughly 3 percent annually—the cost of silver has risen 158 percent over the same time period, and aluminum has gone up 71 percent since December 2003. “Almost all of the components used to make our overlaminate and adhesive products have
NOT EVERY in-plant offers mailing services for its clients. Prior to 2005, for example, the in-plant at The Stelter Co.—a marketing firm in Des Moines that works with non-profit organizations—simply shipped printed material back to clients or handed it over to an outside vendor. But Dan Manderscheid, who joined Stelter in October 2004 as a mail processing specialist, says that outsourcing mail didn’t make sense given that the company was otherwise a one-stop shop with artists, Web designers, editors, legal counsel, marketing professionals and print operators on staff. In January 2005, Stelter purchased an inserter, two address printers and Pitney Bowes SmartMailer software,
OFFSET PRESSES continue to pull their weight amidst the flashy digital printers that have been popping up in offices nationwide. These digital newcomers might be great for short-run work, but for big projects they still must step aside and let ye olde offset workhorses do their thing. Don’t think being called “old” is an insult, though. The longevity of these machines is impressive and can easily add up to decades. Jim VanderWal, production manager at CRC Product Services in Grand Rapids, Mich., says that his shop’s four-color Heidelberg SM102 was purchased in 1989 and the two-color Heidelberg SM72 dates back to 1975. Over
HERE’S A nightmare that no manager wants to face: Being hired to run an in-plant only to have your boss decide to outsource the whole shebang six months later. After being hired in August 1996 as manager of Printing Services for BlueCross BlueShield (BCBS) of South Carolina, John Fabian awoke to find his dream job turning scary. “They hired me because the former manager was retiring,” he says. “Work had been slow to get to the customer, and I had a digital background in addition to offset know
The print shop dynamic is generally driven by the conflicting demands of cost, speed and quality. Today's copiers and digital printers are the kings of speed, for example, yet the payment plans imposed by manufacturers might drive the cost so high on large jobs that printers must turn elsewhere. That's where offset presses still shine. Despite all the hype from printer and copier manufacturers, offset presses still provide benefits that can't be
After outsourcing its printing, the University of Central Florida endured a nightmare of inefficiency and expense. Now the in-plant's back and customers are happy again. Back in 1993, the higher-ups at the University of Central Florida, in Orlando, looked at the books one day and were shocked to discover their in-plant was running a deficit of more than $100,000. Even though they subsequently learned the print shop manager was pilfering funds—and driving up the negative numbers—upper management decided to bring in outside help. "The print shop's account was so far in the hole that outsourcing was the only way they saw of
