State of Washington Olympia, Wash. Despite being one of the country's largest in-plants, the State of Washington's Department of Printing behaves much more like a small company in the way it treats its employees. "We're very pro-people," remarks Dan Swisher, assistant director of the Olympia, Wash.-based operation. "We like to grow from within. We like to involve everybody in our operation. And we like everybody to have fun doing it." To show employees how important they are, Swisher says the department's director, George Morton, visits each employee every single day. With 105 employees, that's a tough task, but the payoff is great. Trying
In-plant Profiles
Safeco Redmond, Wash. No matter how harried his workload gets, Larry Jablinske remains the perfect manager: calm, cool and in control. Perhaps that's because Jablinske is assistant director and manager of Publishing Services for SAFECO, an insurance and financial products company whose customers are primarily independent insurance agents and financial advisors. Working with insurance-related products all day is sure to set your mind at ease and make you feel safe, right? Or perhaps Jablinske is merely comforted by the knowledge that his department and its crew of 104 provide quality, value and service largely unmatched by outside vendors. "We save an average of
Kansas Division of Printing Topeka The Division of Printing for the State of Kansas is already a large operation—$7.3 million in sales, 83 full-time employees, three satellite locations—but Director Richard Gonzales would love to see it expand. "We've consolidated [work from in-plants in] the Departments of Health, Revenue and Human Resources, and have assumed a large portion of the work from the Department of Transportation," says Gonzales. "We visited the print shops, researched their jobs and showed them in black and white what it was actually costing them." Those hard figures helped convince the departments to pool their workloads. For example, the division's newest
Two years ago, Konica replaced the offset presses in its in-plant with digital printing and copying equipment. The operation has become a showcase for the company. Ray Embury looked around the industrial park in Windsor, Conn., where his shop and several other corporate in-plants were located, and noticed some of them shutting their doors. Determined that Konica's Printing Services wouldn't become "a dinosaur" like some of those shops, Embury began making changes. "A lot of the in-plant operations around us were closing because their work was being outsourced to other printers," says Embury, Konica's manager of office services. "We've never outsourced, but we saw
Progressive Insurance Highland Heights, Ohio True to its name, Progressive Insurance's in-plant is always on the lookout for new types of work to bring in-house and new ways to save the company money. "It's not always the obvious," remarks Jan Grega, manager of Corporate and Creative Services—like when she noticed the company was outsourcing the tipping of its plastic claims card onto a carrier sheet. The in-plant was already printing that carrier, so why not do the tipping too? "As the volume grew, we found that that was something that we could save a lot of money by bringing in-house," she says. "In
University of Missouri Columbia, Mo. Not only is University of Missouri-Columbia Printing Services the largest printer in town, it also recently became the offset printing arm of the town's local government. "The City of Columbia's in-plant closed its offset printing operation, and we set up a meeting to see if we could help them meet their printing needs," says Rick Wise, director of the university's in-plant. "The city is now a regular printing customer for us." This isn't all the in-plant has been up to, however; it's also been converting its Quick Copy operation from "off-the-glass-only" copying to digital printing with electronic access.
To a famous brewer like Anheuser-Busch, quality is crucial. Jon Schroeder makes sure its printed products are equally outstanding. by PAMELA MORTIMER Life at Anheuser-Busch's St. Louis in-plant isn't always a party. Sure, employees get two free cases of beer a month, but those are for take-home use only. You won't see press operators downing cold Budweisers. What you will see is a very clean shop, and a very proud staff. "They are proud of what they do, and I'm genuinely proud of them and represent them that way," remarks Jon Schroeder, supervisor of Graphic Communications for the world's largest brewer. That pride
Four Blocks From Terror Jeffrey Allen was hard at work in the New York Stock Exchange's fifth-floor in-plant when terror struck from the skies. Just four blocks away, two hijacked airplanes slammed into the World Trade Center, filling the blue September sky with smoke, fire and fear. "We heard the explosions," Allen recalls. But that was only the beginning. Told to stay in the building, he and his coworkers experienced the double horror of watching the towers collapse on television and feeling the earth shake beneath their feet. "All the dust and the smoke came over here and we couldn't even see
After 35 years with the University of Nebraska, Ken Holm has decided to retire. His exemplary dedication to both staff and customers helped Printing Services grow to be one of the country's top in-plants. by Bob Neubauer After four years in the Air Force, Minnesota native Kenneth L. Holm found himself jobless in Lincoln, Neb., back in 1963, with a wife to support. To help him out, a neighbor got him an apprenticeship at a local printing firm. Though Holm knew nothing about printing, he decided not to be picky. "My wife had a job and I didn't," he laughs. "I needed
Only a handful of organizations operate in-house book binding facilities. IPG recently took a look inside. by Cindy Waeltermann In a time when technology advances focus on simplifying and speeding up printing and binding processes, it's ironic that the best method for binding a book is sometimes no different than it was in the 14th century—with a needle and thread. "It's pretty labor intensive," observes Marc Flechsig, manager of the University of Minnesota's bindery. His book binding operation does about 5 percent of its binding by hand, he says, following criteria set by the Library Binding Institute. Basically, if a book is thicker than