Digital Press Slashes Overtime at Gustavus Adolphus

No one likes paying overtime. Yet it was all but unavoidable at Gustavus Adolphus College Print and Mail Services when graduation time rolled around.

The in-plant would receive the material for the commencement program on Friday afternoon and have to finish it in time for Sunday’s ceremony. That meant working through the night and into Saturday for the in-plant’s staff. One year they didn’t print the last of the 5,000 programs until Sunday morning.

That all changed this year after the Saint Peter, Minn., in-plant installed a new Xerox Color 1000 Press. Running 100 pages per minute, even on heavier stock, the 1000 made short work of this year’s program. By midnight Friday, the crew was heading home. Director Naomi Quiram expects more of the same in the months ahead.

“This machine will drastically reduce the amount of overtime,” she predicts.

It will also help the shop expand its growing insourcing business. Quiram says that 10 percent of her in-plant’s gross comes from off-campus business. Compared with last year, off-campus revenue has jumped 30 percent this year, she adds.

The new Color 1000 has brought drastic improvements to the shop compared to the overworked Xerox 8000AP that it replaced.

“It’s a whole new world,” remarks Andy Biedermann, production coordinator.

While the 8000AP could only handle up to 80-lb. cover, the Color 1000 can run 130-lb. cover at its rated speed of 100 pages a minute. The quality is much better too, with more vivid color, thanks to low-melt EA Dry Ink, which requires no fuser oil to deliver a smooth, offset-like finish at resolutions of 2,400x2,400 dpi.

Quiram looks forward to using the clear dry ink station to add spot or flood effects to printed pieces, as was done on a recent invitation to an event celebrating the retirement of the college’s former president.

Biedermann is pleased with the color management tools on the Color 1000, including automated image-to-media alignment and color calibration.

“We save so much time not having to manually calibrate the front-to-back and the skew,” he notes.

The single-pass decurler flattens sheets so they can run more easily through the shop’s Horizon booklet maker.

“It’s easier to do our finishing work when we’re not hand-uncurling everything,” Biedermann says.