Richard Gonzales

Kansas Division of Printing Topeka The Division of Printing for the State of Kansas is already a large operation—$7.3 million in sales, 83 full-time employees, three satellite locations—but Director Richard Gonzales would love to see it expand. "We've consolidated [work from in-plants in] the Departments of Health, Revenue and Human Resources, and have assumed a large portion of the work from the Department of Transportation," says Gonzales. "We visited the print shops, researched their jobs and showed them in black and white what it was actually costing them." Those hard figures helped convince the departments to pool their workloads. For example, the division's newest

Starting as a linotype operator in a hot metal shop, Richard Gonzales moved steadily upward to become director of the Kansas Division of Printing. As a kid growing up in Topeka, Kan., Richard Gonzales got some sage advice from his father. "My dad told me to learn a trade," recalls Gonzales, director of the Division of Printing for the Kansas Department of Administration. In those days, he says, the city's Hispanic citizens had limited options, and his father naturally wanted the best for him. So Gonzales did some thinking. "I was in high school and they had a printing class, and I took it—and

Getting the O.K. to buy new equipment requires research, reporting and good timing. Learn how to dodge the red tape and get what you want. Gregg Gabbana decided to move into color printing and convinced the management at Unisys to purchase several pieces of equipment, including a color press, an imagesetter, a color proofer and a plate processor. Mike Renn of Mellon Bank negotiated an offset press, two Macintosh workstations, a RIP and a color copier for his in-plant shop. How did these two get the goods when so many other in-plant managers are snagged by red tape trying to buy even

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