In-plant Profiles

If it has anything to do with paper, Printing Services at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, is likely in charge of it. by Caroline Miller AT THE University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Printing Services has found a simple path to rich rewards: "We are trying to follow the paper," says Printing Services Director Geoff Bant. "We try to diversify as much as we can. We don't want to just be a printer or just a copying place. We try to be a lot of everything. The campus needs all sorts of things; the challenge is to provide these services without losing money." The university is

Paul Molfino started the in-plant at UC-Santa Cruz soon after the university opened in 1965. As the school has grown, so has his operation. by Bob Neubauer Poised on a hillside overlooking the Monterey Bay, some 90 miles south of San Francisco, the University of California-Santa Cruz has come a long way since it opened in 1965. The land that once held a cattle ranch and a quarry now teems with over 12,000 students. Witnessing much of that growth has been Paul Molfino, the employee with the longest career of service at UC-Santa Cruz. When he was hired 37 years ago to start

Ken Baker started Office Services as a one-man act. In his 37 years there, he has built it into an award-winning 19-employee operation. by BOB NEUBAUER You wouldn't know it by his accent, but Ken Baker was born in London, England. "I was a war baby," says Baker. "My mother came over on the Queen Mary, and I came with her." For one who came from so far away, though, Baker is perhaps most well known in Colorado Springs for how long he has stayed in one place. For the past 37 years, he has served as manager of Office Services for the

Poly Plates Vindicated While polyester printing plates may have once been guilty of stretching and failing to register, those days are now past, according to a study by Printing Industries of America's Graphic Arts Marketing Information Service. The study uncovered numerous examples of printers producing quality process color work in tight register. Today's poly plates can handle up to 25,000 impressions, the study says, and will work on a range of presses. They can print products with half tones, screen tints and heavy coverage. For more information, visit www.gamis.org. Profits Down Quick printers reported a drop in profits in 2000, according to the

When the City of San Diego's in-plant sees an opportunity, it rushes right in to take advantage of it. The resulting mix of services, both traditional and nontraditional, has kept customers happy. by CAROLINE MILLER Not only is variety the spice of life for the City of San Diego's in-plant. It's also the key to its success. "We've found that we've had to continually reinvent ourselves, and that like all good in-plants we have to always anticipate the needs of our customers before our customers do," says Liam McGuigan, deputy director of the general services department for the City of San Diego. Situated

State of Washington Olympia, Wash. Despite being one of the country's largest in-plants, the State of Washington's Department of Printing behaves much more like a small company in the way it treats its employees. "We're very pro-people," remarks Dan Swisher, assistant director of the Olympia, Wash.-based operation. "We like to grow from within. We like to involve everybody in our operation. And we like everybody to have fun doing it." To show employees how important they are, Swisher says the department's director, George Morton, visits each employee every single day. With 105 employees, that's a tough task, but the payoff is great. Trying

Safeco Redmond, Wash. No matter how harried his workload gets, Larry Jablinske remains the perfect manager: calm, cool and in control. Perhaps that's because Jablinske is assistant director and manager of Publishing Services for SAFECO, an insurance and financial products company whose customers are primarily independent insurance agents and financial advisors. Working with insurance-related products all day is sure to set your mind at ease and make you feel safe, right? Or perhaps Jablinske is merely comforted by the knowledge that his department and its crew of 104 provide quality, value and service largely unmatched by outside vendors. "We save an average of

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

Two years ago, Konica replaced the offset presses in its in-plant with digital printing and copying equipment. The operation has become a showcase for the company. Ray Embury looked around the industrial park in Windsor, Conn., where his shop and several other corporate in-plants were located, and noticed some of them shutting their doors. Determined that Konica's Printing Services wouldn't become "a dinosaur" like some of those shops, Embury began making changes. "A lot of the in-plant operations around us were closing because their work was being outsourced to other printers," says Embury, Konica's manager of office services. "We've never outsourced, but we saw

Progressive Insurance Highland Heights, Ohio True to its name, Progressive Insurance's in-plant is always on the lookout for new types of work to bring in-house and new ways to save the company money. "It's not always the obvious," remarks Jan Grega, manager of Corporate and Creative Services—like when she noticed the company was outsourcing the tipping of its plastic claims card onto a carrier sheet. The in-plant was already printing that carrier, so why not do the tipping too? "As the volume grew, we found that that was something that we could save a lot of money by bringing in-house," she says. "In