In-plant Profiles

With a sense of humor and impeccable customer service, Kevin Field has made several in-plant success stories. by Mike Llewellyn IT WAS supposed to be a small affair, a quiet gathering of friends and colleagues at Washington, D.C.'s 500-employee Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). They were seeing Manager Kevin Field off to his current post as administrator for Virginia Beach City/Schools Printing and Mail Services. Instead, 250 people showed up to say good-bye. "If they want to come, they're going to come," Field recalls joking to his former boss. No one expected that kind of turnout, but it shouldn't have come as much

With U.S. forces still deployed in Iraq, the CIA's intelligence data is more crucial to national security than ever. The agency relies on its in-plant to publish this top-secret information. by Bob Neubauer Long before the first U.S. troops began their march toward Baghdad, President Bush turned to the CIA for the latest intelligence information on Iraq. The Central Intelligence Agency, in turn, relied on its office of Imaging & Publishing Support (IPS) to print this classified information quickly and accurately. In the same vein, when the country was preparing to enter Afghanistan in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, IPS

A strong focus on customers, along with expertise in process color printing and online ordering, have built University of Missouri-Columbia Printing Services into an in-plant powerhouse. by Bob Neubauer Not many in-plants can lay claim to a six-color press—let alone two of them. But when you're the largest printing operation in a city of 84,500, the big jobs have a way of finding you. With 105 full- and part-time employees, University of Missouri-Columbia Printing Services is not only a local printing giant, but one of the top in-plants in the country. It ranked 27th on the recent IPG Top 50, and boasted sales of

From road construction to university printing, Joe Goss' customer service skills have served him well. by Bob Neubauer "No previous printing experience needed." Those were the words on the job notice that caught Joe Goss' eye back in 1985. After 12 years in the road construction business, he was starting to wonder about his future. The slumping economy was taking its toll on business. Figuring he had nothing to lose, Goss applied for the job as director of Indiana University Printing Services, in Bloomington. Much to his surprise, he was called for an interview. That interview revealed that the in-plant, though very proficient

If your in-plant has only a handful of employees, don't feel too bad. You have lots of companionship. But if you're using your size as an excuse for not expanding, then pay attention to what these small in-plants have been doing. Despite having between one and seven employees, they have been thinking big, accomplishing goals that even Top 50-sized in-plants would envy—such as adding a Heidelberg NexPress 2100 digital color press, and printing four-color marketing material. They have found ways to generate new income and added capabilities that make them essential to their organizations. And it was all possible because they dared

No fire is beat until every flame is doused. That's how Printing Services Supervisor and firefighter Fritz Sims approaches his job. "Whatever comes into the shop, we'll do it. And if we can't do it, we'll find a way to do it," says Sims, who, after hours, serves with the Westville, N.J., fire department. A mouthful, maybe—but the seven-employee Delaware River Port Authority in-plant has the goods to back it up. It already prints 95 percent of the agency's work. "We want that five percent," Sims says. The remaining work is a blaze of color flyers and brochures promoting the Port Authority's Philadelphia/Camden

Pete Hoekema was just one month into his job as graphics manager at Muskegon Community College when his pink slip arrived. It was 1976 and the western Michigan college had decided its graphics program was too expensive. At the time, the school had separate print shops for instruction and production. To help preserve them both, Hoekema huddled with the instructors and proposed a merger. "I said, if we want to keep this thing going, we really ought to join forces," Hoekema recalls. So they did. The in-plant was rearranged to let students work on live jobs—with real deadlines. The school saved money, and

Every Boy Scout knows the words "Be Prepared." This motto has also driven Robert Mettee to keep the BSA in-plant a step ahead. by Bob Neubauer If everything had gone as planned, Robert Mettee might be an auto mechanic right now. But fate—and his fellow students at the Baltimore vocational technical school he attended—sent him hiking down a different trail. "I was trying to get in the automotive class, and that filled up," he recalls. "My second alternative was printing." So he signed up—and quickly discovered he had a knack for it. "I graduated at the top of my printing class," Mettee

No in-plant manager has a better rapport with his staff than Director Rich Finner. The six full-time employees running Riverside Community College's Production Printing department are engaged in steering the shop every step of the way. And they've got a reason to be interested—not only do they mentor part-time student employees, they have a hand in how the shop's money gets spent. Here's how it works: Twenty-five percent of the revenue coming into the southern California shop is a result of unsolicited insourcing. "We don't drum up that business. They come to us," explains Finner. The money is deposited in what

It's safe to start calling Terry Fulcomer a financial guru. With six employees and a base budget of $750,000, the Prince William County graphic arts and print shop supervisor just scored a Heidelberg NexPress 2100, along with a Heidelberg Digimaster 9110. The key to his wisdom? Insourcing. Roping in 15 to 20 percent of the in-plant's income, insourcing work from other counties and municipalities is essential to this very successful shop. But it wasn't always such a booming in-plant. Fulcomer says when he first started at the shop, most of the equipment was archaic and the quality of work was very poor. "I've