In-plant Profiles

by Bob Neubauer Even though it's the largest in-plant in the country and produces scores of important government documents, the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO), in Washington, D.C., doesn't usually get a lot of national attention. That all changed in September of 1998 when the Starr Report was unleashed on the world. GPO was given the arduous task of disseminating that report to an eager public. The initial report arrived on disk, but supplemental materials consisted of boxes of documents, which had to be shot as camera-ready copy. The resulting products were put on the Internet, on CD-ROMs and on paper—all under the

University of California, Berkeley Berkeley, Calif. University of California-Berkeley Printing Services has a long and distinguished history as the main provider of printed materials for the school. According to George Craig, director of printing services, the university created its first print shop in 1874 in the basement of an early administration building. Up until the 1950s the printing department was combined with the publishing division. When the printing needs of the school became too great, a separate department was born. "It was recognized as an early requirement and has grown since," Craig says of the printing department. Since those days back in

Boeing Printing and Micrographic Services Seattle, Wash. When an in-plant wins Best of Show in the annual IPG/IPMA In-Print contest, it's a sure sign of a top-notch, quality operation. But when a shop takes Best of Show four times in eight years, you know it's got to be one of the best in-plants in the country. That's certainly the truth about Boeing's 111-employee Printing and Micrographic Services department, which won its fourth Best of Show in 1997. Lead by Derek Budworth, the operation has the heavy responsibility of maintaining thousands of active manuals for the aerospace giant's numerous aircraft. It's 65,000-square-foot facility

Meeting tight deadlines is even tougher when your equipment breaks down. Sometimes selecting the right paper is the key to productivity. When the duplicating department at New York law firm Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson receives a printing request from one of the firm's attorneys, it knows the urgency and quality requirements that come with the request. Whether it's a brief from a bankruptcy case, a subpoena or a client document, the in-plant knows it must produce the material right away—no matter what time of day it is or what day of the week. With constant deadline pressure, the 18-employee in-plant must

Though the publishing industry is infused with digital technologies, the in-plants that serve publishers often run more modest operations. In remote Madawaska, Maine, digital printing technology is about as common as a winter sunbather. "We haven't seen much up here, because we're in a very rural area," says Maurice Morin, in-plant printing manager of the St. John Valley Times. Morin, who oversees five full-time and three part-time employees in this town on the Canadian border, takes this all in stride, however. "Digital technology is something that larger firms can afford to buy. The money's just not here. People here want

A new five-color press is just the beginning for Spartan Stores, which plans to expand its in-plant even more. Wander through any grocery store and you are likely to see thousands of dollars worth of printing. Posters line the windows, inviting shoppers to come inside; stacks of circulars greet them as they walk through the automatic doors; and multi-color shelf cards point out sale items. Then there are the endless ad inserts in the Sunday paper. Who designs and prints up all this material? For a group of grocery retailers in the Midwest, it's the in-plant print shop at Spartan Stores. Forget

When a tornado virtually leveled his campus, Brad Johnson turned to a fellow in-plant manager to help him print his college's documents. When the tornado hit, it hit hard. Like a chainsaw, it tore through the once-serene campus of Gustavus Adolphus College, tearing up trees, smashing buildings and inflicting some $68 million in damage on the St. Peter, Minn.-based school. When Brad Johnson got a look at the wreckage the next morning, he couldn't believe his eyes. "I was in shock," recalls the director of printing services. "I've never seen anything like it. It was one of the hardest moments of my life."

Montgomery County Public School's in-plant explains why going the digital route enabled more customer satisfaction—and created more jobs. Once upon a time, taking a school test meant sharpening your No. 2 pencil and concentrating on filling out the answers on a piece of paper. Today, in some circles, that procedure has given way to the click of a computer mouse. An end result of this trend has been the reduction of unnecessary waste. With that in mind, and the explosion in the use of digital printers/copiers, in-plant managers are starting to rethink their production processes. Some educational institutions are already taking notice. At

After initially turning down the job, Hitachi Data Systems' in-plant ended up producing an intricate invitation worthy of being named Best of Show. Sometimes the best work is masked by its apparent simplicity. That's the case with the 1998 In-Print Best of Show winner. To look at the winning piece, a holiday party invitation printed by Hitachi Data Systems, the untrained eye might notice only the lack of colorful artwork and grandiose design. But the trained eyes of our five judges took in all the detail: the intricate spot varnishing, the near-perfect stitching, the sharp registration, the accurate crossovers.

Electronic publishing and print-on-demand systems have helped NASA bring about a quantum leap in the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of its information dissemination. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) looms large in our national consciousness. Here is the agency that has defined for Americans—if not for all humanity—what is humanly possible, with the phrase: "If we can put a man on the moon..." Yet to think of NASA as simply the space agency is to misunderstand its mission. NASA is all about rocket science; but the word to emphasize is science. The purpose of rockets is to better understand the vast and mysterious