Mike Kaplan

Insourcing can save your in-plant. Find out how from managers who have done it. In the early '90s Liz Messner noticed an alarming trend: In-plants everywhere were being shut down. Her own in-plant at the Hospital and Health System Association of Pennsylvania Service Co. (HAPSCO) could well have been the next victim. Fortunately, though, HAPSCO had decided a few years before to let her Harrisburg, Pa., in-plant start insourcing printing from outside organizations. That decision, says Messner, has kept the in-plant in business. "Had we not gone outside and brought work in...we would not be here today," declares Messner, senior director of

Meldisco's in-plant prints for three retail shoe chains—and insources to boot. MIKE KAPLAN loves challenging his in-plant. As if Meldisco Printing Services wasn't busy enough tackling nearly 5,000 jobs a year for three major shoe chains, Kaplan also finds the time to insource more than $100,000 of business each year. "It's been working out great for years," he says. Kaplan started insourcing eight years ago when Meldisco—the Mahwah, N.J., company that owns and operates all of K-Mart's shoe departments—was a division of the Melville Corp. He printed for Melville divisions that did not have in-plants. "I saw the opportunity to generate income and