Day with a Pro: Dick Marsel, Printing Manager, Quad/Graphics

In the quaint Hudson River Valley town of Saratoga Springs, NY, most everyone greets passersby with a hearty “How are you today?”

When catalogers make an on-press visit to the Quad/Graphics printing plant here, their experience fits with the bonhomie of the town.

After passing by the waving flags bearing the logos of the magazines and catalogs currently on press, the first person a visitor might see is plant manager Dick Marsel.

A veteran of the printing industry, Marsel has been in charge of the Saratoga facility since 1985. “I was one of the first plant managers at Quad/Graphics, so it was a learning experience,” he says.

Marsel oversees all of the plant’s operations, and splits his time between handling customer and employee issues.

Scheduling a Print Run

Marsel says a main part of his work is to monitor job flow, “to organize and keep the manufacturing flow going with the scheduling people and other people in the plant.”

But he also keeps in close contact with Quad’s other eight facilities on the frequent days when a catalog is being printed simultaneously at one of those sites and in Saratoga. “The plants are really connected at the hip when it comes to servicing our customers and maintaining our efficiency,” he says.

He says Quad hopes to develop a method to perform a “color OK” in one plant, send the color information across transmission lines hooked up to another plant, then lock the presses in and start running them in either facility or both: in short, “wherever the customer wants to be.”

Printer-Cataloger Relations

All of Quad’s customer service representatives (CSRs) report to Marsel. Each service rep at Quad has about five to 12 jobs going at once (a separate staff of four does the scheduling).