Articles by CBAssociates

Published, Newspapers and Technology, February 2001

If The World Were Perfect. My Vision of A Production Plant

"I don't know what I will need in ten years, but I know I will be giving the advertisers services and products that will be different than today, and it (the services) will have to be lightening fast." reported an Advertising executive during a recent product planning session. He also, lamented that "everything would have to be customized both in offering and pricing."

The production executive replied: "You don't know what you want, but I have to have the wisdom to plan this facility to provide anything you can dream up and provide it on short notice, and we should still make a good return."

Providing editorial, advertising, and the readers anything they want, faster than they expect, and at low costs is the charter of most new facilities.

What happened to the days of Christmas' past when a new facility just replaced the old with a little more printing capacity? The easy answer is that the speed of change has increased exponentially fostered by the change from a manufacturing society that used what could be produced, to a market driven economy.

What does this mean for the coming years?

The products and services that newspapers can offer are based on the capacity of the facilities and equipment. At some point these capacities become limitations.

The challenge of a new operation is to have as few limitations as possible and this generally means that the new facility will have more capacity than the perceived need. A facility that only provides for the current or perceived needs will be under-designed.

A new operation would meet current and projected needs. However, to be prepared for the future it would include provisions for new products and services to generate new dollars. The new plant's most important function for the future will be revenue generation.

A plant suitable for the next couple decades will be designed so all functions can be performed quickly, with as few process hand-offs as possible, and with as few people involved as possible. The facility design and equipment will favor capital over expense.

An example of process consolidations will be that future plants will make CTP equipment part of the pressroom. If there were multiple presses, there might be CTP machines for each press, or a conveyor to automatically deliver the plates to the appropriate press couple.

The press could have automatic plating, which is the most time consuming part of an edition change over. Of course, there would be customized editions, even if only a few plates. If time was an issue, the pages could be changed automatically without stopping the press. This would require a 5th high tower or maybe even an additional tower.

The press could be run a variety of web widths and change from one to another quickly.

Color and any color on every page. That would seem to be the wildest wish of the ad and editorial staff, however, it will be a basic requirement for the future of newspapers. This has been so for magazines for years.

To meet the color needs, the new facility will have tower presses for four over four (back to back) printing of process color. Some of the more aggressive organizations will have a fifth high unit for a fifth color. The fifth unit will be used for spot or logo colors. Color is one of the few revenue streams a newspaper can encourage and a well-designed press can help.

The press would have the traditional ink, water and compensation presets. The newer presses will have automatic feed back and adjusting systems to make sure the ink or the color was set to the specifications of the graphic and photo system. This would be done with zero human intervention, unless there is a unique problem.

This means that the measurements and controls would be based on the intent of the reproduction and not just ink film thickness, as done today. Measuring devices such as spectometers will replace densitometers.

The papers would be conveyed to the packaging system by conveyor that accounted for each newspaper and could direct newspapers to an inserter, storage device or stacker based on demand. The control system could keep track of each newspaper throughout the process to facilitate addressing and labeling.

The inserting would continue to grow as a percent of advertising revenue and in complexity. Automatic storage systems would be used for advance runs. Jackets and advance products will be fed to the inserters automatically. The inserters would be optimized for each run based on the attributes of the products going into the package. Extensive use of storage and self-loading devices would be used to limit staffing.

The newspapers could be verified by weight, or thickness to insure all inserts and advance pieces are in the newspaper before being stacked. The stacks will be verified for count.

The newspaper control system will track each newspaper to insure the correct edition and inserted packaged was collected in the right unit and delivered to the right carriers. There would not be any tied bundles as the bottom wrap and strap is wasteful.

The transportation of the units of papers would more resemble a Coke distribution system than the current system.

The carriers would be notified, but the method they select, when their truck left the dock and told what time to expect arrival at the distribution center. Of course, with GPS, the route and arrival times of the trucks would be known.

The state-of-the-art plant outlined above can be built today. All the pieces are available, though integration raises some issues.

This system, as described will place more pressure on the maintenance and repair aspects. Of course, they will work with portable computers that have the current and correct prints for electrical and mechanical systems. Interactive TV will be used to communicate with "top gun" troubleshooters. Remote trouble shooting will be the normal way of checking the systems.

Some of the suppliers will have the equipment automatically notify them when there is a potential for a problem. The problem would be fixed over the modem or otherwise resolved and the production executive would have an email detailing what was done.

We have always thought that the plant of the future might be a lights out environment. Maybe the plant of tomorrow will be one that does not cause the executive to loose any sleep.

Now, if only the manufacturers would build their equipment to be self-adjusting so we would not have to set up inserters or adjust an ink roller and at the end of the run to wipe it down.

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