Epson America

Life is good for Southeastern in Stuart, FL; so good, in fact, that in mid-January, Don Mader, Southeastern's president and CEO, broke out the cake and champagne a year early to celebrate. The actual occasion was the rebranding of the company, from Southeastern Printing to Southeastern, with the tag line "Complexity Made Simple." According to Mike McGuire, account executive, the move was a by-product of a cultural revolution that had been developing for the past couple of years.

It's a familiar story: an organization needs the space occupied by its in-plant, so the in-plant is sent packing. Most of the time no studies are done on whether this is a cost-effective plan; an administrator just makes the call, leaving the in-plant's customers to deal with the aftermath as best they can.

Tight budgets in Louisiana and the need for more on-demand printing have compelled the Office of State Printing to slim down and digitize. The slimming down came in October when staff reductions brought the Baton Rouge operation down to 20 full-time employees plus five student workers. The transition from offset to digital technologies followed closely after.

Established 90 years ago to fill the educational mission of faculty, staff and students, Iowa State University Printing & Copy Services is constantly breathing new life into its products and services.

At Tyson Foods, Inc., all management personnel, including CEO Donnie Smith, are birds of a uniform feather. "We all wear khaki to show that we are working managers and not afraid to get our hands dirty," reports Russell Gayer, manager of Tyson Printing Services (TPS).

Times are good at the University of Washington. Its Creative Communications operation ended its fiscal year on June 30 $200,000 in the black—the second year in a row that the 90-employee operation has earned a profit.

At Graph Expo, digital press vendors highlighted their workflow and digital front end capabilities, enabling everything from transpromotional and variable data printing to ganging of smaller jobs into longer production runs. The emphasis was on automation, personalization and run-length optimization.

Each year, a panel of industry experts, journalists and consultants analyzes the graphic arts technologies that will be on display at the Graph Expo trade show and assembles a list of those they feel will have the greatest impact on the printing industry. This list of “Must See ’Ems” winners has traditionally been revealed at the pre-show Executive Outlook Conference, just a day before the Chicago show opens.

With the early announcement of this year’s top technology winners, GRAPH EXPO 2012 attendees will be able for the first time to plan their Must See ’Ems booth visits in advance of the show. They also will be able to take advantage of a new Must See ’Ems pre-show webinar for more in-depth discussions of the winning technologies and the reasons they were chosen.

Agfa Graphics will be hosting a free “Wide-Format Open House” event at its distribution center in Plano, TX, on Sept. 18-20, 2012, from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. “Wide-format inkjet is a fast-growing segment in the printing industry and is helping many printers differentiate themselves by offering new and exciting products and services to their customers that previously were unattainable for most commercial printers.”