February 2007 Issue
‘Always Innovative’
IF AN in-plant’s success is measured by its growth, Auburn University’s CopyCat operation is a big winner. Much of this can be attributed to Glenda Miley, who has grown the shop into a full-service, state-of-the-art facility in her 13 years there. “Every year we have done better than the year before,” she attests. “We are always innovative, never stagnant. We stay on the cutting edge.” Born in Montgomery, Ala., and raised in that area, Miley started her graphic arts career while still in high school. She worked summers as a copyreader with Books Inc., a company that turned hardcover books into paperbacks. After studying
Build Up Your Bindery
ALL IT TOOK was one awful binding job by an outside printer to make Auburn University start looking at perfect binding equipment. “We sent 200 books to a local printer and they messed them all up,” recalls CopyCat Manager Glenda Miley, still clearly peeved at that printer for charging her anyway. Her in-plant had to reprint all 200 books and send them elsewhere for binding—a big money loser overall. Miley realized her Auburn, Ala.-based in-plant could have saved the university lots of money if it had its own perfect binder. So one year ago, the shop installed a Duplo DB250. “We’ve never looked back,” she proclaims.
Counting Costs
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
Did You Say ‘No Charge?’
WHO SAYS nothing good is free? A number of industry suppliers offer excellent educational materials for printers at no cost. IPG asked around and collected a list of these complimentary publications, along with information on how you can order them. Among the leaders in producing free educational materials has been EFI. Its “ABC’s” series of books are a treasure for knowledge-starved in-plant managers. Among its titles: • “ABC’s of Proofing” • “ABC’s of Print MIS” • “ABC’s of VDP” • “ABC’s of Workflow” The latest, “ABC’s of Design for Digital Printing Guide,” is a 46-page, full-color book, which, like all EFI titles, is available for free download at
Digital Printing in Government Forum
More than 125 document professionals attended the first Digital Printing in Government Forum held recently in Washington D.C. It was organized by INTERQUEST, a research and consulting firm serving the digital printing and publishing industry. Robert C. Tapella, chief of staff at the Government Printing Office, gave the keynote address, providing an update of GPO’s document production and distribution strategy. He also discussed initiatives GPO is spearheading to bring the benefits of digital printing to customers. Other presenters included Jane Bloodworth, manager of Printing, Graphics and Map Design at The World Bank, Mack Strauss from the Defense Logistics Agency’s Document Automation and Production Service, and Pedro
Embodying Print On Demand
FEW IN-PLANTS have embraced on-demand printing like ASG Central Operations, in Naples, Fla. That’s because, unlike most in-plants—dragged into print-on-demand from the traditional long-run world—ASG Central Operations was created as a 100 percent digital, on-demand operation by its parent, ASG Software Solutions. In its eight and a half years of existence, Central Operations has produced, packaged and shipped countless technical documents for ASG’s 150+ software products, as well as marketing and training collateral for the company’s 900 employees in 65 offices around the world. To handle all this volume, the in-plant utilizes nine employees in four facilities, located on both coasts and in
Monochrome Still Rules
WHILE DIGITAL color has been the hot topic in the printing industry for the past few years, digital black-and-white printing still accounts for the majority of the digital print volume. According to InfoTrends, black-and-white devices produced 874 billion impressions and generated $17.8 billion in retail value of print in 2005. Total equipment revenues (equipment, supplies and service) reached $7.41 billion. Equipment vendors have not lost sight of this opportunity and have continued to introduce new and improved devices to replace existing digital black-and-white equipment, as well as to open new market opportunities. Vendors realize that selling equipment has become about more than feeds and
One Step Ahead
AFTER RECENT disasters like Hurricane Katrina, the Northeast Blackout and the September 11th terrorist attacks, most businesses owners are aware that a disaster could happen. Still, not all businesses have taken action to prevent, prepare for and recover from one. Most believe it never will happen to them and are willing to accept the risk, often without analyzing what that means. Large disasters may not happen to you, but small disasters can and do happen somewhere, every day. Webster’s defines disaster as “a calamitous event, especially one occurring suddenly and causing great loss of life, damage or hardship.” A business disaster could
Paycheck Comparison
There you sit, toiling away in your in-plant, confident your hard work is allowing your parent organization to run more smoothly, but not sure you’re being rewarded adequately for your efforts. If only you knew how much other in-plant managers were making. Well In-Plant Graphics is here to help once again with our biennial salary survey. This year we received an impressive 380 responses. From these we have calculated average salaries in a number of different categories—data you can present to your supervisors when it’s time to talk money. While in-plant managers’ salaries rose in almost every industry, some increased far more than others.
Ricoh, IBM Form Joint Venture
Long a leader in digital office solutions, Ricoh is making a move into the production printing environment. It has formed a joint venture company with IBM, based on IBM’s Printing Systems Division. Ricoh will own 51 percent of the joint venture, to be called the InfoPrint Solutions Co. “For Ricoh it signals the beginning of new stage in our strategy for global growth,” said Masamitsu Sakurai, Ricoh’s president and CEO, speaking in Japanese at a New York press conference. “We believe we can adopt our existing technology and production known-how to the production printing field.” Trends like variable data printing and print on demand prompted
Upgrades Reshape World Bank In-plant
Even as its new Presstek 52DI direct imaging press brings World Bank Printing Services into the short-run four-color offset market, the busy in-plant is expanding its digital printing business with the addition of Océ and Kodak equipment. The new capabilities, all added within the past six months, have caused a reshuffling of work inside the 41-employee Washington, D.C.-based operation. The July addition of a two-color Océ 9220 roll-fed printer allowed the in-plant to move black-and-white book text and other short-run web jobs off of its web presses. At the same time, longer-run book pages were transferred to the 9220 from the shop’s cut-sheet digital
