Hands-Off
Stacker Safety
Some people can’t resist popping the bubble wrap used to ship breakable items. Others compulsively alphabetize everything from CD collections to spice jars. Unfortunately for mailroom managers, the sight of crooked newspapers piling up in stackers or strappers can prove just as difficult to ignore.
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| At Newsday, clear-plastic curtains help remind part-time collators to keep hands out of strapping machines. |
“I guess it’s just human nature,” says one manager at Tucson Newspapers Inc. in Phoenix. But human nature isn’t always careful–in a videotaped demonstration of the potential for injury, the manager pushed a yardstick into a stacker bucket. When the bucket turned, the ruler snapped.
Several papers have taken steps to help prevent these entirely preventable stacker and strapper accidents, using both high-tech circuitry and simple visual cues.
In Tucson, where stacker mishaps led to two serious injuries, Len Dotson and Joel Spillane, working with Rick Tullar, developed a “light curtain” that keeps a stacker turntable from moving when sensors detect a foreign object (in other words, a hand or arm). An alarm sounds, and the turntable stops moving.
But here’s the genius part. When this happens, production doesn’t stop–papers continue falling into the stacker, and completed bundles continue churning out, preventing folder jams on a press line or holdups downstream. The only difference is that the stacker bucket doesn’t turn to help settle the pile. In Tucson, bundles of 50 papers are typically turned four times before exiting the stacker.
Tucson’s “light curtain” uses infrared sensors to ensure the stacker’s exit areas are unobstructed; when a foreign object enters the area, the circuit is broken, trapping air in the pneumatic turntable cylinder and bringing it to a stop, according to Wayne G. Bean, the papers’ former vice president of operations. Once the obstruction is removed, the turntable automatically continues operating. The system also can keep the turntable from starting back up until it’s reset with a key.
At Newsday in Melville, N.Y., staffer Gloria Darienzo came up with a simpler way to provide a visual cue for part-time collators manually stacking down bundles as they roll out of strappers. Newsday’s invention is also a curtain, but in the more literal sense. Specifically, it’s a plastic curtain (pictured above), affixed to the top of the strapper’s frame with a magnet, right below earlier warning signs that were occasionally ignored.
Since the plastic strips are only affixed to the top of the frame, bundles
flow out of the strapper unimpeded. When the machine needs to be serviced,
the magnet is removed from the frame for access to the strapper’s
innards. But the curtain still provides a visual and tactile reminder
to keep hands out. 
Justifying Mailroom Metal
by Mark Toner
At a time when the economy is slowing, Gerry Riley, vice president of production at The Journal News in White Plains, N.Y., discussed two plants with two very different reasons for spending big money on mailroom systems.
Given the current slowdown, “capital spending is being evaluated,” Riley acknowledged during a session at the AmericaHEast trade show in Hershey, Pa. But “there’s a lot of technology out there,” he added. “We need to maximize [productivity] of our equipment and staff.”
And often that means capital outlays. In Appleton, Wis., for instance, a production facility built by Thomson Newspapers and later bought by Gannett Co. of Arlington, Va., illustrates how investing more in the mailroom can allow savings elsewhere.
When Thomson was planning the facility, intended to print three dailies with a combined circulation that now exceeds 145,000, conventional wisdom dictated a double-width press. But “why not go with the ability to run a smaller press longer, and buffer the output?” Riley asked.
So Appleton invested in a dynamic-buffering system featuring two FlexiRoll units from GMA Inc. of Bethlehem, Pa. They, in turn, “drove the purchase of less costly single-width presses,” Riley said.
Advance or live-run sections move onto the FlexiRoll wind stations, where papers are secured onto roll stands. The stands are then decoupled for storage or unwound into a roll-to-pocket feeder on one of the plant’s three GMA SLS 2000 inserters. The only human intervention involves moving rolls from wind to unwind stations, which is done by forklift.
The key? “Looking at both press and packaging as a unified solution,” Riley said.
Of course, few papers have the luxury of building production facilities from scratch. At The Journal News, packaging crews make do with equipment averaging 18 years in age. Meanwhile, preprints have soared to 400 million-plus pieces a year.
To justify replacing the antiquated systems, staffers identified $4 million in cost savings by detailing the effect of new equipment on staff hours, payroll and nonpayroll expenses. Staffers used similar figures and a projected 5 percent annual growth rate to project an additional $3 million in cost-avoidance savings. Defined as “future expenses that will become reality based on current trends,” cost avoidance “is often overlooked” by papers seeking to justify equipment expenses, Riley said.
For instance, without cost-avoidance calculations, the projected return-on-investment for The Journal News’ proposed two 24-into-2 SLS 2000 inserters and associated downstream equipment was 11.4 percent. When cost avoidance was added to the mix, ROI jumped to 17.7 percent, Riley said, urging production executives to devote “enough time up front” to calculate such figures.
Staffers also identified some additional intangible but important benefits–carriers would get a complete package on weekdays, and just two packages on Sundays. And they included several alternative scenarios, including a separate Sunday machine and remaining at the status quo.
Riley said that Gannett uses 15 percent in “hard savings” as
a “rule of thumb” in giving capital projects a green light.
Of course, it “depends on the year,” he added, earning a nervous
laugh from the audience.
Toner is TechNews editor. E-mail, tonem@naa.org.