Articles by CBAssociates

Submitted, IFRA, October 2001

Closing the Waste Gap Between Perception and Reality

When revenue is down, it is only a matter of time before the accountants start to become a pain in the neck by questioning every expenditure.

Some areas are better targets than others are, they quickly learn.

Challenging the plate costs isn't very productive. Although most production folks would just as soon cut down the number of editorial makeovers, this cost savings idea very seldom meets with much enthusiasm from Editorial. And besides, even if plate costs were reduced by 10 percent, that's not much money. The real money is in people and newsprint.

When cutting expenditures on the people side, the first things to go are meetings, then training, then equipment maintenance, then building maintenance, then employee-related expense — there goes the complimentary holiday turkey — then finally the people.

Sooner or later, accountants get to newsprint, which accounts for the largest supply expense. What makes it compelling is that a small improvement nets real money. It doesn't take the accountants long to start focusing on waste — on printed waste, the largest category.

Everyone knows waste is bad, and therefore should be minimized, which to an accountant means reducing it from the current level. Most waste occurs at start-up. It is sometimes called make-ready or start-up waste. Whatever it is called, it all ends up in the NAA printed waste category.

Here is where the Rule of Unintended Consequences comes into play. When pressure is applied to reduce start-up waste, but nothing in the system changes to create good copies faster, what will the press operators do?

The unintended consequence of an admirable goal — to reduce waste — can result in operators signaling that copies are good when they are marginal at best. The efforts to reduce waste, unfortunately, many times produce the unintended results of sending copies to subscribers that have significant printing defects.

With certain exceptions — national publications such as USA TODAY and local newspapers that are quality conscience — many newspapers in North American send out copies if the press operator detects no major defect, such as heavy scumming or a big problem on Page 1.

For instance, an ink setting and registration that might be visually defective on some of the inside pages do not meet quality guidelines, but are sent out if the operator feels they will not likely generate major complaints.

Why would an operator send out a newspaper that he wouldn't put on the publisher's desk as an example of work he is proud to produce? It does not take press or production managers long to figure out that they can avoid criticism and maybe financial pain by producing good or low waste numbers. Those are tracked and reported daily, weekly, monthly and annually. Quality is not tracked on a financial report and therefore, is monitored only on the exception basis. Which means, if no one at the top complains, it must be OK.

Everyone will quickly admit that they would like to wait longer before sending out copies, but to do so would create unacceptable waste. It is a dirty little secret that no one, from the publisher to the press operator, wants to talk about.

It is possible to produce good copies that meet specification with less waste than many papers run. But to do so creates a Catch-22. How do you justify a capital expense? The quick answer is by reducing waste. However, with waste artificially low, there is no financial justification and, therefore, most of the time there is no capital expenditure.

Does this problem exist on new presses. There is less justification for it on a new press, but it exists.

Would a press manufacturer warrant the waste of 500 copies or fewer for six webs, on start-up with several webs in full color? Warrant it even if the specification were changed, if that could be defined?

The reality is that presses have to be warm before they settle down or get to a steady state, which takes approximately two hours. That is longer than some pressruns. Steady state is necessary for the variation to narrow. This density variation is based on the press being in a steady state, which means it is as warm as it will get. This is a typical contract specification.

That is the newspaper market. Let's talk about the commercial market where the sale is won or lost on the make-ready numbers. The press that starts up the fastest with the expected quality wins the order. The buyers focus on start-up, so the manufacturers focus on it as well.

There seems to be no way to beat the accountants, so we have been addressing the start-up waste and quality copies. But it seems that a big paradigm shift for some manufacturers is in order. We received a proposal that included a guarantee that no more than 5,000 copies would be wasted on a 48-page newspaper with 16 pages of color. This definition of waste had nothing to do with meeting running specification, but the copies only needed to be free of visually detracting defects.

I don't know of any publisher who would think that this is what they want. Time to get the engineers in the field and understand the real world.

The first step in problem solving is to understand the problem. To some extent we — the industry — are the problem. The manufacturers will respond to the industry demands and if they have not focused on starting up faster with good copies, it must stand to reason that the industry has not demanded this.

We have participated in developing industry acceptance standards that focus on testing after the press is warm. I was involved in such a test where the person running the test for the manufacturer was prepared, as he had in another test, to run the press for four hours before pulling test samples. He thought it unreasonable to insist that he pull samples on a one-tower test after 35,000 waste copies.

The publisher had a problem relating to 35,000 copies of waste on one web when the normal newspaper is five webs with slightly over 50,000 copies.

Of course, it is obvious that there was a huge difference in opinion on the purpose of the performance criteria. The publisher thought that it would represent a real-world production run.

The tester was very clear that this was not a production test, but a press test and only a test of the iron. This was not a test of any electronic aspect of the press.

What a gap between perception and reality these two had.

Does this mean the tests are a waste of time? Not necessarily, as they can identify defects, and on the positive side, they can make the publisher feel pretty good about the press passing the test. Sort of like graduation, but rather than tossing the cap in the air, they are happy to toss a payment to the manufacturer.

The testing for press acceptance, in addition to the standard IFRA test, should be based on start-up quality and waste. In reality, the start-up is more important to the publisher than splitting hairs over a point of density.

This represents a significant difference from the standard press test, as it is based on a cold press and includes all features of the press even if they are not related to reproduction.

Start-up waste factors are: registration, cutoff, web alignment, and reproduction. When the reproduction process includes more than 1,000 variables, it seems like an over simplification to reduce something so complicated to four elements.

The threshold for registration and reproduction at start-up are less demanding than when running for a of couple hours. However, they reflect a standard of quality that will not distract the reader with any part of the press production process. Grass should not be blue and all of a person's eye should be in the eye socket, for example.

To meet any start-up criteria requires that all components of the press work well, such as the ink and water preset system. The presets have to be calibrated from the start of the installation, not as part of a learning process. (A discussion of a learning system to adjust calibration will have to wait until another day.)

Automatic register control should work properly. The cutoffs should be aligned quickly, and the roll positioned correctly so the webs line up, all this in a few hundred copies.

For this to happen, the installers' efforts need to be focused on all components. This means that all parts come up at the same time, that the instruction on all components are given equal weight, and that efforts in these components are in concert with each other.

Even more than being in concert, they must be supportive and truly integrated. Presets, for example, could not be treated as a third-party add-on or the responsibility of another person in the company. They have to be integrated throughout the installation and start-up process.

For this to become a reality, the iron folks need to embrace and understand the electronic aspect of the press. This does not mean just being able to operate the press from a console, but to be able to understand it as well as they understand the iron. The distinctions between the disciplines must narrow.

The manufacturers have always responded to and addressed the publisher needs when they understand that orders depend on being responsive. A great example is shaftless. This has migrated down to single-wide, single-around presses because the buyers want them. It will be the way all presses are driven in the near future.

Downturns in the economy always make us focus on cost, which is a good aspect of bad times. The changes made during the tough times tend to continue into the next good times, and high start-up waste becomes unacceptable. Add to this that advertisers are more demanding and want all the copies to look good.

The simple expectation of the publisher is to print good copies quickly and within few hundred copies. When this happens, the gap betweem the publisher's perceptions and the manufacturer's reality will be closed — at least in this area.

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