Articles by CBAssociates

Submitted, IFRA, September 2001; Published, News & Technology, November 2001

How Many Heads are Enough?

What's the best way to handle today's complex and growing inserting operation? One large machine that can handle a lot of inserts and complete most runs in one pass, or a smaller machine that makes multiple passes?

The magnitude of this dilemma is best illustrated during The Season. The Season is the Thanksgiving through Christmas period, which begins the first week in November and ends with a bang on Sunday, December 23. As it quickly approaches you can bet a lot of packaging managers are starting to think in terms of survival mode. And making their wish lists for additional storage and inserting equipment.

' Tis the Season

It is the Season when preprint pallets start to show up in the paper storage area, hallway, covered shipping areas, in temporary truck trailers in the parking lot, and in any open spot. Last year during this period most major metros produced papers that exceeded 5 pounds (2.25kg). When something like that is thrown from a car it's best to keep the dog inside.

It is the Season when the need for part-time employees escalates and overtime for regular employees is normal, and there never seems to be enough of either.

It is the Season when the packaging managers wish they had more space and more inserting capacity, and wonder aloud how they will get through another year.

The managers' only hope, and the thought that sustains them through the Season is that someone will finally listen to them and build an addition to the building for storage and buy a bigger inserter or even an additional inserter.

Continued Growth

"The growth in preprints has to stop," has been said every year for the last 10 years, but the number of inserts continues to grow. And will continue to grow. Because preprints are one of the limited revenue paths that a newspaper can influence, the drive for more revenue guarantees this growth.

The number of different advertisers also will grow; the number of different inserts per advertiser in the same issue or version will grow. And the number of preprints running in less than a full run will grow. About the only thing that will not grow is profit per insert.

Another element that is increasing is the number of newspaper sections printed in advanced and purchased products that require inserting.

Another area of growth is the number of difficult-to-insert products from small advertisers. Newspapers accept these inserts to compensate for the decreasing number of major advertisers, and therefore decreasing number of inserts from the majors, in a mature market. This decline is due to companies purchasing other companies and stores closing.

Generally, these inserts are printed by the newspaper or at a local sheet-fed printer. And typically they are short runs that can be difficult to insert, as they may be single sheets printed on paper stock that is too light.

This leads to complaints from the packaging manager that the advertisers do not follow the newspaper's published specifications and that the flimsy inserts slow the machines and add to the cost of doing business. They know their world would run much more efficiently and cost-effectively if standards for inserts existed in the United States.

But the managers know that the advertising department will take anything that comes through the door. As proof they reflect on the year an insert advertising razor blades included an actual razor blade. They smile, although it was not fun at the time, as they remember that they had to hire everyone they could find to remove the insert from the inserted package after someone realized that people could get hurt.

Continued Complexity

Another trend that further complicates the inserting operation is target marketing. Target marketing, as far as the packaging manager is concerned, is a term for making the inserting operation too complicated, too time consuming, and too costly.

Why does a newspaper of 200,000 need and use 99 zones? Why make the inserting operation so complicated that in the middle of the week there are 33 inserts, but no inserted package has more than 12 of these inserts?

Depending on the newspaper's location, a 40,000 circulation newspaper could have between 25 and 40 inserts on a Sunday. The number of inserts throughout the week could range from two to 16.

The Options

So what is the best way to handle this volume and complexity? Back to the original questionÑshould the newspaper purchase a medium-sized machine that can handle 14 to 16 inserts and make multiple inserting passes? Or should they purchase one large machine that can handle 30 or so inserts and complete most runs with one pass?

Should they buy a large machine and load it up with the various versions, so that the 33 inserts could be on the machine and inserted automatically to create the 12 needed in any one package?

Packaging managers are developing two schools of thought.

One school feels that smaller machines and multiple passes are the best way to insert. The advantage is fewer part-time employees and the ability to work over several days.

The small-machine school says it is best to use a size that produces the best net output. Larger machines have more opportunities for misses or multiples and therefore will stop more often. It is better to make good small advance packages of up to 100 or 120 pages to reinsert. This, they feel, has the greatest potential for inserting accuracy and improves the quality of the bundles. Also, by making multiple passes, they can accept inserts closer to publishing day.

The other school feels that a large machine and a single pass is best, even though it requires a large number of people for only a couple of shifts per week.

The big-machine thinkers believe it makes more sense to set up the hoppers before the runs to minimize downtime during the run. They point out that if it takes only five minutes to change over a product, that five minutes multiplied by the number of people standing around could cost an hour for each stop. Therefore, the time spent before the shift saves time and money. A large machine, they feel, will better serve the large Sunday package as well as the highly zoned products mid-week.

The large-machine group tends to advocate hopper loaders, placing the same type of insert in the same position with staff handling multiple hoppers.

No matter which school of thought an inserting manager follows, the one thing everyone agrees upon is that they need more heads than they did just five years ago. Therefore, the definition of a small machine is getting bigger.

So what do the large newspapers think? The Washington Post, more than 10 years ago, purchased a large collator. This year they are adding another collator with 72 hoppers.

Seventy-two must be a good size for a major metro; the Chicago Tribune has purchased three collators and one of them has 72 hoppers.

A technical evaluation that looks at the optimal combination of hoppers and run time can help determine how many heads will be enough.

The factor influencing the number of heads is illustrated by the graphic. This shows, on a daily basis, the insert data from the previous 12 months.

The inserting categories are identified as Advertiser that placed the inserts, Versions that occur when an advertiser provides more than one insert for zoning purposes or for multiple inserts, Non-paid or newspaper-produced sections or purchased products such as magazines, and Largest package or the number of inserts in the largest package sent to the carriers

We then need to know the Highest number of inserts on any one day of the study period and the Lowest number in that period.

From the data submitted, we can determine the most common highest number of inserts that the newspaper must handle. This eliminates the unusually high numbers. The exact numbers to be excluded are determined with the newspaper after analyzing the data. The purpose is to avoid focusing on events that do not happen often so that newspapers won't have equipment sitting idle for most of the year awaiting the few big days.

The Future zoning information is analyzed to determine how many different inserts would be processed during a shift. The packages could consist of only 12 inserts, but 20 different inserts were needed to make up this package during a shift.

This could, in the simplest form, suggest that for this day the most economical model would be an inserting machine with 20 inserting hoppers.

Of course, in real life, the analysis is not that straightforward. If the newspaper wanted to run two consecutive shifts, then the total number of inserts would need to be known for both sifts to determine the ideal number of heads in order to avoid a major change over.

This is when the balance between lost inserting productivity due to the crew standing around waiting during a hopper change over and having enough hoppers to avoid the downtime must be analyzed.

Some of the medium to large newspapers have machines sized just for the Sunday packages, while most newspapers use the same machine for daily and Sunday.

When an inserter has to serve both masters, the analysis must take into consideration changing between daily needs and Sunday needs. This could lead to a machine with extra hoppers for the daily so that the hoppers needed for the Sunday operation don't have to be changed over to the daily and back to the Sunday.

As the size of the Sunday newspaper continues to grow, the analysis becomes more complicated when the inserters must serve daily and Sunday needs.

Completing a technical analysis can be a fact-finding endeavor or it can verify that the packaging manager's preference for handling volume and complexity is on target. Armed with this information, the inserting department just might survive the Season.

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