Re: The Benefits of Printing In-House

[Sue Ahrenhold <sahrenho -at- arbortext -dot- com>]

At 11:43 AM 10/1/99 -0400, John David Hickey wrote:
>Greetings!
>
>My employer is considering printing our manuals in house rather than giving
>the job to a Printing company. The entire software package is made up of 8
>individual modules, each module getting its own manual (150 pages each on
>average).
>
Been there, done that!
First of all, list all the equipment you are going to need, and the
workspace you are going to need to lay this all out. Cost it out

Don't forget the pallets of paper, the preprinted covers, the packing
boxes, the binding machine (anybody else ever inserted comb binders by
hand?), the shrink wrapping material, the shrink wrapper (A heavy-duty hair
drier). Industial strength paper cutters. 8.5 x 11, you say? Fine -
industrial strength hole punchers. Don't forget about storage space for all
this. 

You will need work tables, and bodies to help, backup printing cartridges,
lots of scrap paper for notes. 

Would you like to hear about the night our seniormost manager had a
critical graphic-intensive presentation to the board, and needed to print
to "the only good printer in the building" - ours? When we had 50 copies of
a manual to get out?
Four AM is a lousy time to leave the office. A groggy volunteer took the
boxes to the airport to catch the first shuttle in the morning - we were
late, missed our production deadline, which was 10 PM at the airport the
night before.

Trust us, your instincts are right.