Management Counts
By Ray Chambers
About Ray
Ray Chambers, CGCM, MBA, has invested over 30 years managing and directing printing plants, copy centers, mail centers and award-winning document management facilities in higher education and government.Most recently, Chambers served as vice president and chief information officer at Juniata College. Chambers is currently a doctoral candidate studying Higher Education Administration at the Pennsylvania State University (PSU). His research interests include outsourcing in higher education and its impact on support services in higher education and managing support services. He also consults (Chambers Management Group) with leaders in both the public and private sectors to help them understand and improve in-plant printing and document services operations.
Looking for Common Ground in Pittsburgh
It’s been several weeks since representatives of the in-plant community descended on Printing Industries of America (PIA) headquarters near Pittsburgh for an “In-plant/PIA Summit.” The summit was the brainchild of recently elected PIA board chairman Tim Burton and followed on the heels of unsuccessful merger talks between PIA and NAPL.
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If I Wanted it Tomorrow, That’s When I’d Ask For it
You all know the drill: a customer shows up at the in-plant with a job that must be completed in an impossible time frame. The in-plant gets the job out on time, usually involving some heroic effort, and the customer fails to pick it up. Should you complain? Or see a rush job as an opportunity to add value, to show how an in-plant can contribute to the core purpose of the organization?
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The Problem with Benchmarks
If you’re looking for a benchmark to evaluate your performance, we suggest that you continuously benchmark your pricing against the prices charged by available commercial alternatives. You are not competing with other in-plants; you are competing with the print shops that operate in your area.
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In-plants Aren’t Commercial Printers
Everyone has suddenly become aware of “in-plants.” There was a time when in-plants were looked down on by our colleagues in the commercial world. We were somehow not quite as good as our commercial counterparts. Now that’s changed.
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Recent In-plant Closings Don’t Add Up
In-plant closings are nothing new; we’ve all been under the outsourcing cloud for years. But why so many in such a brief period of time? These institutions are planning to shut down their printing plants even though they have not seen proposals from potential outsource vendors.
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