Xerox readies for an Olympic-size task. (manages documents at 1996 summer Olympics) (Company Business and Marketing)

DocuTechs, DocuPrints part of a new printing paradigm for the Olympics

The athletes will not be the only ones facing great challenges during the Olympic Games in Atlanta this July. Nor are they the only people who have spent years preparing for the Games. Xerox has been planning, preparing and pouring resources into its Atlanta Olympics effort since 1993. The result is an impressive networked printing system among 28 venues that is expected to produce more than 37 million pages during the 17-day event.

A long history of participation. Xerox has been involved in the Olympic Games since 1964. But its role grew in 1993 when it became a Worldwide Olympic sponsor. The company was charged with the task of handling all the printing and publishing needs of the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games (ACOG) prior to the Olympics and during the event. It was also responsible for providing and maintaining the equipment and playing a key role in building the infrastructure to support the printing requirements.

As the planning group for the Centennial Olympic Games, ACOG is responsible for producing all of the documentation for the visitors, athletes and press at the Games. This includes everything from programs, to schedules to forms to maps to event results. Xerox was responsible for handling that as well as the day-to-day interoffice documentation generated by ACOG since it set up shop in 1993.

That is no easy feat. Xerox estimates that since it first began installing equipment in 1993 through the end of the Games, it will have printed about 350 million images (an image is defined as a single sided 81/2x11 page).

Document demands

Just picturing the stacks of paper that would encompass 350 million pages is mind boggling, but that figure only represents a fraction of the documentation the Olympics will generate by its completion. While researching the documents required in planning and producing the games, Xerox tracked about 18,000 different documents that would total about one billion pages. However, some of the work was more feasible and …