When I ponder the future of in-plants, I generally see it through the eyes of the forward-thinking managers I've met—the ones constantly adding services and contemplating new ways to help their customers.
Las Vegas
For years, Clark County School District’s in-plant was getting by using Filemaker Pro database software to handle its billing. There was one big problem, though. “No one in the [organization] was here when that database got built, so no one knew how to go in and change it,” observes Shelly Severin, acting graphic arts supervisor for the school district, the fifth largest in the United States.
Creating your own customized shop floor management system always seems like a great, inexpensive idea at first. But then the years stretch on, your IT staff turns over and support fades away. That was the scenario at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), where the 14-employee Reprographics department had been using an internally designed system based on IBM Lotus Domino since the late 1990s.
BACK IN 1996 or so, at the On Demand Show in New York City, there was a pleasant reception at an artsy gallery with great munchies, a bunch of gorgeous fashion models and a plethora of digital print visionaries, illuminati, vendor execs, and assorted hangers-on. It was the launch of PODi—the Print On Demand Initiative.
in July, the in-plant for the City of Henderson, Nev., installed a new Xerox iGen4 digital color press. The shop traded in its Xerox DocuColor 250, along with a Xerox DocuColor 5252 and a DocuTech 6135, keeping its lease costs for the iGen4 the same. So far the iGen4 has done an excellent job printing promotional materials for the Department of Cultural Arts and Tourism. The cost savings have been noticeable.
AS A CHILD, Mark Shaw dreamed of flying to the stars. And though his current role as operations specialist for National Security Technologies, LLC (NSTec) isn’t exactly the same as being an astronaut, it’s still his dream job. “It’s fascinating,” he enthuses. “It motivates me. The brilliance of the scientists there, it’s amazing.”