Across the country, several in-plants have added production inkjet presses. Excellus BlueCross BlueShield installed one about a year ago and is seeing significant cost savings as a result. The State of Colorado is about to add one as well.
Colorado
Bob has served as editor of In-plant Impressions since October of 1994. Prior to that he served for three years as managing editor of Printing Impressions, a commercial printing publication. Mr. Neubauer is very active in the U.S. in-plant industry. He attends all the major in-plant conferences and has visited more than 170 in-plant operations around the world. He has given presentations to numerous in-plant groups in the U.S., Canada and Australia, including the Association of College and University Printers and the In-plant Printing and Mailing Association. He also coordinates the annual In-Print contest, co-sponsored by IPMA and In-plant Impressions.
Ray Chambers, CGCM, MBA, has invested over 30 years managing and directing printing plants, copy centers, mail centers and award-winning document management facilities in higher education and government.
Most recently, Chambers served as vice president and chief information officer at Juniata College. Chambers is currently a doctoral candidate studying Higher Education Administration at the Pennsylvania State University (PSU). His research interests include outsourcing in higher education and its impact on support services in higher education and managing support services. He also consults (Chambers Management Group) with leaders in both the public and private sectors to help them understand and improve in-plant printing and document services operations.
The first thing he noticed was the door. A thick, wooden, swinging door, it separated the print shop from its customers in Arapahoe County's government offices, sending the clear message that no one but in-plant staff was allowed to pass.
When will an inkjet production press make its way into your in-plant? The technology is advancing steadily, and a handful of in-plants have already invested in it, but for most managers, inkjet means wide-format, not high volumes and high speeds.
Anyone who thinks in-plants are in decline should have been tagging along with me the past two weeks. Between PRINT 13 and the Southeastern Printing and Digital Managers Conference (SUPDMC) a week later, I've lost count of the number of managers I've seen. So heavy was the in-plant participation at PRINT 13 that I could not cross the trade show floor without spotting a manager.
PRINT 13 was a busy show, but perhaps no group of printers had a busier time there than in-plant managers. Between the luncheons, sessions, receptions and other forums designed specifically for in-plants, managers were challenged to find time for the show floor itself.
With traditional offset exhibitors like Heidelberg giving the Chicago trade show a pass, the digital print vendors were the new kings. Xerox, Canon, Konica Minolta and Fujifilm led the pack in booth size, and each of them had new inkjet production presses to proclaim.
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