Secap

Over the past 25 years, Printing Services at The University of West Alabama has not added a single employee. Yet, according to Director Jimmy Robinson, the workload has increased tenfold. “So we have to get machines that are able to do things faster,” he says.

in 2008, Yale University decided to begin construction of a new Yale School of Management. Yale Printing & Publishing Services was located in a building that was scheduled for demolition. To determine whether outsourcing made sense, the university did a complete financial review of the in-plant. The study revealed that it would be more costly to close the shop and outsource than to move it.

Any in-plant manager lucky enough to be in Chicago last month for Graph Expo got to witness some significant developments in the world of graphic arts. Dubbed “The Inkjet Graph Expo” by some, the show featured more inkjet technology than most in-plant managers had ever seen in one place.

Omaha’s Westside Community Schools in-plant has replaced its presses and platemaker with new digital black-and-white and color printing equipment.

Central Michigan University Printing Services has installed a Fuji Javelin 8300 thermal CTP system running Fuji Brillia and Ecomaxx-T processless thermal plates.

THOUGH PRINT 09 may have gotten off to a slow start, the crowds eventually showed up. And when they did, many of them headed right for the bindery equipment. Nowhere was that more true than at the Standard Finishing Systems exhibit, which was bustling with activity on the third day of the show, even as other booths appeared to be on siesta. Mark Hunt, director of marketing for Standard, thought he knew why.

The University of Oklahoma was a big winner at this year's In-Plant Printing and Mailing Association conference. Not only did the Norman-based in-plant win the most In-Print awards (11) for the quality of its printing, the shop earned two of the association's most prestigious honors: Mail Center of the Year and the In-House Promotional Excellence Award. OU's Central Mail Services was lauded for increasing its business, reorganizing its delivery routes and purchasing value-added equipment while reducing its budget.

Despite the sour economy, xpedx is investing. That was the message the company wanted to send when it showed off its new Cincinnati-area print technology center to graphic arts journalists last month. It is reportedly the only U.S. center demonstrating equipment from a variety of manufacturers.

After 30 years, Xerox’s reign at University of Oregon Printing & Mailing Services has come to an end. The 46-employee in-plant, which has used Xerox DocuTechs and DocuColors since the mid ’70s, has just installed 10 new printers and copiers from Canon and Ikon, after Ikon Office Solutions turned in the lowest bid. Director J.R. Gaddis says the new equipment saved the university 20 percent over previous costs.

SOMETIMES ACCIDENTS help you discover a new use for an old machine. Ron Lindgren, manager of Quality Impressions—the in-plant for Avada Hearing Care, in Beaver Dam, Wis.—says his in-plant once ended up with a half-million misprinted envelopes because the wrong original was chosen before printing. To fix the foul-up, the shop designed and printed custom labels, then used its Secap Jet 1 Tabber to position those labels and recover the envelopes. “Without that machine, 500,000 envelopes would have had to be trashed,” he reveals. That’s not to say the 18-month-old Jet 1 Tabber isn’t useful under normal circum