ENTERING THE MICROZONE

Bad news for the ill-prepared post-press department: Customers don’t just want sub-ZIP zoning -- they want address-specific delivery.

A panel of the successful and the strivers gathered in Miami last week, suggesting baby steps toward this ultimate of zoning goals.

Successful micro- and address-specific delivery efforts require retaining, retraining, rethinking, reinventing, restructuring and retooling, said Jack Stanley, senior vice president of operations and technology at the Houston Chronicle Publishing Co. "Before you stir up this hornet’s nest, be sure you can do some of it in the process."

Why? "Advertisers are asking for it," he said. "They are not just asking for it, they are demanding it. Advertisers are voting with their feet and dollars, running to other distribution methods."

Newspaper managers should ask these questions:

o How can we do this without killing ourselves, our operation and our company?

o Can we make money?

Every manager should begin discussion now of how to give customers what they want, he cautioned.

"Full-run is dead," Stanley said. "Truck zones are useless -- a way of kidding yourself that you’re doing something that isn’t full-run. ZIP codes don’t cut it. Partial/split ZIPs are for amateurs. Carrier routes are a stopgap. Block groups come closer to what advertisers are looking for."

What can you do now?

o Assess the people you have and the people needed.

o Can you buy, modify or enhance equipment?

o What will that let you produce?

o How can you evolve to the provide the capabilities?

Then, Stanley said, "get all the suits in the same room to present the program and capital needs."

At the Chicago Tribune, retooling for better zoning is on ongoing process. For now, it means spending millions on machines and mortar.

Dick Malone, the Tribune's vice president for operations, described the continuous growth of preprint revenue -- 10 percent per year over the past 10 years -- as a driving force behind a multimillion dollar, multiyear project to expand its operations facility. But that expense and expansion -- he expects the company will invest $100 million in machines and facilities all told -- is driven in part by zoning needs.

"To maintain rate integrity, we have to come up with smaller zones and more versioning," he says. "Our company also has an interest for more local zoning of editorial."

In the early '90s, the newspaper had about 100 zones, he recalls. Today, there are about 350 zones with projects for 2002 through 2004 to create 700 zones, and in 2005, 1,050 zones. Those numbers climb if versions of inserts also are different for different areas.

The company’s expansion of Freedom Center in Chicago (including accommodating the potential plan to adopt computer-to-plate technology) will add 115,000-plus square feet of space. It adds 15 new gripper conveyor lines for the existing 10 Goss presses. The facility will have 25 stack/tie-lines (existing and new), four-to-six new automatic palletizers and room for storage of 1,000 pallets of free-standing inserts.

A separate Sunday inserting facility across the street will have 113,000 square feet of space with high-speed inserting equipment, palletizers and an automatic storage and retrieval system.

The changes eliminate an 18-year-old Nolin bundle-tray system, add speed throughout production, increase massively the storage area for free-standing inserts and works in progress, allow the paper to handle the increased complexity of inserting and improve insert tracking and accuracy.

Savings will come from efficiencies, including pallet-loading automation which puts the product into the field more quickly. Although Freedom Center was state-of-the-art, retooling adds far more productive equipment, increasing output while reducing waste, Malone said.

-Bob Sims