Mark Krammer

Ace Hardware Downers Grove, Ill. When Mark Krammer, graphic service manager at Ace Hardware, first came to the Downers Grove, Ill., in-plant 15 years ago he was on a mission. He wanted to make Ace Hardware's in-plant that best it could be, but he also wanted to do something more. He wanted to bring the company some thing extra in the form of revenue. "In any operation there are always peaks and valleys," Krammer observes. "What better way to maximize those valleys than to subsidize your company's printing by taking on commercial work?" Insourcing revenue has helped Ace Hardware's 92-employee in-plant to offset

Insourcing can bring in revenue to fund new equipment, while keeping your underutilized machines busy. But controversy surrounds the topic. In June of 1997, Larry Sutherland was a little anxious. With outsourcing on the minds of so many business executives, the former manager of Eastman Chemical Creative Services worried that his Kingsport, Tenn.-based shop might be the next to fall in the name of cutting corporate costs. So he decided to take the offensive. "We went to management and said, 'We think we can reduce our costs by bringing in income and offsetting our costs,' " Sutherland recalls. What he had in mind was