Blue Cross Blue Sheild
  RYOBI DI Provides "Insurance" for Blue Cross Blue Sheild In-Plant

For more than 60 years, BlueCross BlueShield has been dedicated to providing its customers with the best value in health, dental, vision and life insurance benefits. As the insurer's supervisor of Print Services, Mark Anderson plays a key role in sup-porting this goal by producing quality communication materials for more than 1 million subscribers. His priority is ensuring that his department, which oversees all of the company's printing, runs as efficiently as the company's health plans.

To keep pace with the needs of the company and its subscribers, the BC/BS in-plant searches continuously for the right technology to get the job done quickly and with the highest quality. Anderson, who has been with the company since 1984, says that the in-plant has undergone many changes as a result of this vigilance.

The most recent, and, in many ways, the most far-reaching change was the addition of a Ryobi 3404 DI direct-imaging press. It was installed -- "not by design," Anderson notes -- at exceptionally busy times of the year, but without workflow interruptions or production delays. "Despite the job load, we were up and running in no time," he says. "Most people try to build in a lot of down time for a conversion like this. We actually saved time."

The addition of the Ryobi DI Æ sets the capstone on a trend toward printing self-reliance for BC/BS. Anderson says that throughout the nearly 20 years he has been with the Print Services department, it has moved steadily from dependence on outside resources to an ability to produce even the most sophisticated multicolor- or jobs internally. "All printing goes through this department," Anderson says. "We outsource very little. Everything comes to us, and we decide whether to do the job internally."

Run length requirements were changing as well. "We were doing the same quantities overall, but in shorter runs," Anderson says. He notes the trend to shorter runs is even more pronounced, and for unmistakable reasons.

The problem for Anderson was finding a press that could handle short runs, as well as print color to his standards. Initially, he says, "I was watching the DI technology but was not ready to jump in, especially because I still wasn't seeing the quality we needed. Designs were getting more complicated and requiring more ink coverage and we needed higher tolerances for bindery."

The in-plant produces an average of 4 million 8.5" x 11" impressions per month, according to Anderson. This prodigious output means that there is always plenty of work for the bindery, which uses a Horizon MC-8 collator to produce an average of 100,000 saddlestitched booklets per month. The BC/BS in-plant operates with a staff of nine -two fewer than it employed to prior to the installation of the DI press. Being able to eliminate obsolete positions for stripping and analog platemaking was an important factor in gaining management's approval to purchase the direct-to equipment, according to Anderson. Another argument that strongly favored the acquisition of direct-to capability, he says, was turnaround: the fact that the in-plant could now get its printing done "a minimum of three times faster" than it could with its old presses and pre-press workflows.

"Corporate Communications is releasing designs they've been saving for a long time, waiting for us to have the ability to produce," Anderson says. "They used to show us five- and six-color, beautifully produced pieces that couldn't be handled by our in-plant. Now we can produce the highest-quality material while controlling costs."

As the authorized Ryobi dealer for the area, Graphco has the infrastructure, know-how and tech-service support to back up the investment in DI Æ technology. Not only can Graphco supply the necessary prepress elements, such as color proofing systems and workflow implementation, but also remote services through your internet connection. You have the need and Graphco has the capability to fill that need. As BlueCross BlueShield has found, the Ryobi DI has certainly lived up to its promise.