At Graph Expo 16 last month, the In-Plant Printing & Mailing Association (IPMA) published its State of the In-Plant industry report, written by Dr. Joe Webb and myself. The study was the result of an extensive survey of in-plant departments gleaned from IPMA’s membership, as well as that of other industry associations. Survey respondents consisted of in-plants in such diverse areas as K-12 and higher education; local, state, and federal government; hospital and medical, including pharmaceutical; non-profit charitable, fraternal, or religious organizations; trade associations, chambers of commerce, and similar organizations; and a broad variety of profit-focused manufacturing, service, and professional entities. We looked at in-plant operations, equipment, products and services, and budgets and revenues. We detailed their relationships with their parent organizations, and quantified the volume of work they outsource to external vendors and accept from outside customers. The report focuses on challenges and opportunities for in-plants, an offers a “roadmap to growth.”

As I was working on the report, I was struck by how large a role wide-format role is currently playing in in-plants—and how much room there is for it to play an even greater role. It can also help solve what we found to be one in-plant departments’ biggest challenges: proving their value to the parent organization.

One of the findings of the study was that nearly three-fourths (72%) of in-plants own wide-format printing equipment, and seven out of 10 (71%) in-plants offer “signage” as service to either their parent organization and/or outside customers, with a further 49% offering “displays.” However, the overall volume of these services is quite low; wide-format printing currently accounts for only 9% of in-plants’ overall volume of work. So there is a lot of opportunity to do more wide-format production.