NEXPO's post-press programs zeroed in on changes in equipment and operations necessary to achieve a targeted product.
Speakers at Tuesday's NEXPO workshop on post-press quality not only presented state-of-the-art solutions but also some mistakes they made along the way.
"Insert advertisers constantly called, complaining that they knew of a subscriber that did not get an insert, in a zone the advertiser had ordered," recalled Jeffrey Stalcup, operations director of The News Tribune in Tacoma, Wash. "We would spend all day waking up last night's machine operators, checking inserting-machine and circulation reports, only to have to admit that because there were several packages on the truck, an error could have been made."
As the problem worsened, and The News Tribune started to lose credibility with advertisers, the paper's goal turned to increasing both accountability and flexibility at every point along the post-press and distribution process.
Today, improvements due to investment in equipment and reporting systems have progressed to the point that advertising and circulation can increase their zoning options beyond the paper's current 40 zones, Stalcup said. The News Tribune will soon zone to the carrier-route level, so that an advertiser can target a demographic area as small as 60-to-100 papers.
Easy package identification, by zone, will be an important element in reporting back to advertisers. "Regardless of where the paper is--on a skid, in a bundle, by itself or in the customer's hands--its contents can be easily identified," he said. Accomplishing that objective, however, "takes advertising, circulation and production working toward a common goal."
On the futuristic side, Detroit Newspapers opened a $22 million Sunday-inserting facility two years ago. It features an automatic storage and retrieval system, said Paul Reiz, manager of the Sterling Heights facility.
The AS/RS--a concept based on a computer, high bay racks and automatic high-rise lifts--automatically places incoming material into rack positions, stores it, and removes and delivers it to a pick-up station when needed by the inserting equipment.
On the horizon, Reiz added, is automatic "just in time" preprint delivery from the AS/RS directly to an inserter head, using automatic guided vehicles with forks. "With the integrated control system, this would be a relatively simple extension of what [facility personnel] are presently doing, and they have enough room in our design to do it."
OK, you've bought the latest post-press technology, and your databases tell you more about your advertisers' customers than they know themselves. How do you deliver those customers to the advertiser?
By purchasing more technology, of course, said William Bolger, director of production for Knight-Ridder Inc. of Miami. "Our mailroom operations just keep growing," he told attendees at Monday's symposium, Post-press Automation and the Targeted Market. "Mechanical inserts have mushroomed throughout the Knight-Ridder organization, from 5.6 billion in 1992 to 6.3 billion in 1994.
To accommodate this growth, many Knight-Ridder papers have overhauled their mailrooms with a wide variety of new equipment: automatic guided vehicles at Detroit Newspapers (publisher of the Detroit Free Press and its Gannett Co. partner, The Detroit News); 10 inserters at The Philadelphia Inquirer; and a completely new mailroom operation at The Miami Herald (aided by a $112 million budget).
H. William Moore, production director of The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, offered a case study of new post-press technology in action--giving his audience a whirlwind description of the paper's new plant, which came on line June 5, 1994.
The Plain Dealer's challenge was significant--dividing a 440,000-copy daily run (600,000 on Sunday) into nine editorial and 30-to-40 advertising zones. Moore's team developed a cart-based system to deliver bundles to 19 regional depots. The paper's entire truck fleet was redesigned to handle the 4,000-plus carts, each of which carries four bundles. Among the fleet improvements: a custom cart-locking mechanism and better internal lighting via translucent roofs and skylights.
Not to be outdone, Robert Urillo, commercial-printing manager of The Hartford Courant, explained how his paper delivers more than 660 million inserts per year to more than 150 ZIP-code zones (ranging from 51 to 200 papers per zone).
"Communication is the key element, followed by automation," Urillo said. A "select-market-coverage" information system interfaces with the Courant's circulation-information system which, in turn, feeds the quantities for each zone back to the SMC system.
Operators, assisted by written schedules and coding on each bundle, can cross-reference each other and immediately communicate any changes or problems. The inserting staff also is cross-trained to understand the entire process and their jobs' effect on that process.
What's next? Urillo says account executives have started to download customer orders directly into the SMC system. And as zones increase in number while decreasing in size down to the carrier level, manual tracking will become nearly impossible, requiring complete computerization of the receiving, warehouse and shipping departments. Ink-jet technology for labeling nonsubscriber products will also be critical, Urillo predicted.
"The technology is there to handle fragmentation down to the ZIP-zone level and beyond," he said, "but the fuel for this technology to work productively is a good communication network."
Collecting and analyzing good data can lead to breakthrough improvements in the production process, said panelists in a Tuesday workshop titled Production Issues: Resource Scheduling, Cost Control and Performance Measurement--It's Where the Bottom Line Starts.
For example, performance measurements led the Greensboro (N.C.) News & Record to focus on improving a single step in its distribution process--and what an improvement! Production Director David Reno showed a before and after video, set on fast forward, of bundle transfers between the delivery truck and the carriers.
The "before" video showed a sped-up driver shuffling back and forth to the truck umpteen times to unload the bundles. Total time: 41 minutes. In the "after" process, the driver simply unhitched a long, custom trailer with several rolling doors on its sides. The carriers each had a key to one of the doors and unloaded their bundles themselves. Total time: four minutes.
As bar-coding technology becomes more versatile, newspapers find it useful in a variety of post-press ways. Syracuse Newspapers Inc., for example, uses a bar code on the front page to count and credit returned newspapers.
Arthur LaGraffe, Syracuse assistant production manager, told a Tuesday session on the technology that his newspaper company uses about 200 independent distributors to handle both single-copy sales and home delivery for the company's newspapers: The Post-Standard, a morning daily; the afternoon Syracuse Herald-Journal, and on Sundays, the Syracuse Herald-American.
Each edition has a separate bar code. After papers are returned to the newspaper plant, the scanned information is collected in order to credit distributors.
The Boston Globe uses bar codes to track preprints that flow through its Sunday insert-package plant in Billerica, Mass. Neil Jackson, plant manager, said inserts arriving at the plant are placed on a bar-code-labeled pallet, allowing the newspaper to track some 18 million different pieces from arrival to the door each week. The bar codes also allow staffers to direct preprints to the right areas for zoning purposes, Jackson said.
TechNews Volume 1, Number 4: July/August 1995
©1997 Newspaper Association of America. All rights reserved.