Modern Woodmen of America: Inkjet and Beyond

Before adding a production inkjet press in late 2022, Mark McCready and his team at Modern Woodmen of America did a lot of soul searching.

“It was not an easy decision,” recalls McCready, manager of Print, Mail and Distribution at the Rock Island, Illinois-based fraternal financial services organization. “We were back and forth that entire year of 2022.”

The 19-employee in-plant already had an impressive collection of printing equipment, ranging from a four-color Heidelberg Speedmaster 74 to Xerox and HP digital presses. But inkjet, specifically a Xerox Baltoro, could bring a lot of new benefits, they reasoned.

“The speed and cost were a big factor,” says Supervisor Chris Stein, noting that the Baltoro could print four times faster on a four-over-four job than the HP Indigo 7r press it would replace, and would be about 65% cheaper on the cost per sheet.

What swayed them were the binding opportunities, McCready says: The in-plant would be able to attach its existing C.P. Bourg bookletmaker to the Baltoro to provide in-line finishing.

Inkjet “was kind of a leap of faith,” he acknowledges — but a leap he’s glad the in-plant took.

Since adding the Baltoro and tweaking its settings for the substrates the shop was using, Modern Woodmen of America’s in-plant has been using it to cost-effectively print high volumes of transactional materials, such as premium notices, annual statements, and member correspondence. With the Xerox Color Accelerator module on the Baltoro, the quality has even been good enough to run some of the company’s magazines when necessary, though the Heidelberg Speedmaster 74 still handles the bulk of those publications.

Ready for Anything

Adding inkjet has given the in-plant a well-rounded selection of equipment to better serve the nation’s third-largest fraternal benefit society, which is owned by its more than 700,000 members. Named to honor the pioneer woodmen who cleared forests to build homes, the 141-year-old company provides financial products to help members clear financial obstacles to a good life.

Located on the banks of the Mississippi in northwest Illinois, Modern Woodmen of America Print, Mail and Distribution operates out of a 54,000-sq.-ft. facility that includes a 9,600-sq.-ft. production floor, and a 24,000-sq.-ft. warehouse area. One of the in-plant’s primary printed products are on-demand, personalized marketing pieces for Modern Woodmen’s more than 500 financial representatives around the country.

“We supply those reps with all their stationery needs, letterhead, envelopes, business cards, booklets,” lists McCready. Marketing brochures can be customized with the representative’s photo and contact info. These are ordered through a storefront based on Ricoh’s MarcomCentral. Most pieces are printed on the Xerox Baltoro with heavier and specialty stocks run on the HP Indigo 7Eco digital press.

Ryan Herbert (left) and Chris Stein check a proof that was run on the HP Indigo 7Eco digital color press.

The in-plant also prints 1,500 monthly magazines for its financial representatives, plus another 2,000 quarterly fraternal magazines. Running between 12 and 48 pages, these magazines are usually printed on the Heidelberg.

The shop’s transactional work — annual statements, member correspondence, tax documents, and about 30,000 premium notices each month — is distributed among its various digital devices based on volume, due dates, click charges, and other factors. Operators understand these parameters and are trusted to make the best decisions, guided by Stein.

“If we’re swamped busy, they’ve got the green light to do what’s most productive,” Stein says.

Impressive Wide-Format Work

But it’s the in-plant’s wide-format work, McCready says, that is most impressive. The in-plant prints a ton of event signage for Modern Woodmen’s annual sales conference, its national convention, and various field representative travel events using its Mimaki JFX200-2513EX UV-LED flatbed printer and UCJV300-160 UV-LED roll-to-roll printer. The shop prints foamcore signage, yard signs, canvas photos, posters, banners, repositionable wall graphics, and more.

In the in-plant’s busy wide-format department, Terri Kosman runs a job on the Mimaki UCJV300-160 UV-LED roll-to-roll printer.

Wide-format, McCready says, now provides between 10-15% of the in-plant’s revenue, and helps make up for a gradual decrease he’s seeing in the transactional work. The in-plant seeks creative ways to use this equipment to decorate different areas in the company, such as a new café being opened in the home office. McCready has suggested customizing refrigerators and other surfaces with printed graphics.

The flatbed allows the in-plant to produce other types of products too.

Caleb Gatheright stands with the Postmark RapidColor 1170 envelope press at Modern Woodmen of America’s in-plant.

“We now provide employee desk nameplates on precut acrylic,” McCready says. The shop made a foam core template for the flatbed and can drop 12 acrylic blanks into it. Name plates used to be sent to an outside supplier and would take several weeks to get done. Being able to create them in-house provides a great value to the company.

“As soon as [a new] employee accepts the position from HR, we can turn it around within a day or two, and then that name plate is sitting on that employee’s desk on their first day,” McCready says.

Elsewhere in the operation, the in-plant’s mail section sent 4.1 million pieces in 2023 including premium notices, annual statements, new policy certificates, postcards, and member correspondence. To process this mail, the shop uses a four-pocket Neopost inserter and a six-pocket Bell + Howell inserter. It also added a Postmark RapidColor 1170 envelope press to replace a less-productive OKI digital envelope press and an aging Heidelberg Quickmaster 46 offset press. The 1170 can handle jobs up to 30,000 pieces, though most range between 500-1,000 envelopes.

“The RapidColor gave us the speed of an offset press and the ease of setup that goes along with a digital press,” praises Stein.

Offset is still alive and well at Modern Woodmen of America’s in-plant. Here, Chris Lehman prepares the four-color Heidelberg Speedmaster 74 for another long-run job.

Insourcing Brings Business

Though the in-plant doesn’t actively seek outside work, McCready says insourcing makes up about 20% of the shop’s volume. A lot of this work is overflow from local printers or jobs requiring equipment the in-plant has that they don’t. In-kind work for nonprofits or school districts also contributes to its insourcing volume.

McCready greatly values the networking that comes from attending events like PRINTING United Expo and the In-plant Printing and Mailing Association (IPMA) conference. The information he got from his peers was a big help when the in-plant was looking into inkjet, he says.

“I always come away inspired, for sure,” he says. “When we were going through the inkjet decision, that was probably some of the most beneficial information I picked up that helped influence me.”