Total Your Savings

by Nancy Lowther

The totalizer---no, it's not the name of the latest Schwarzenegger movie. It is, rather, "a monitoring system that totals, or adds up newspaper counts at workstations," says Tim Cooper, vice president of marketing for NCS Corp. Totalizing systems have recently become popular as a tool to help managers control newsprint waste. However, totalizers do not themselves reduce waste, says Cooper. "That depends on what management and the operators do with the counts."

A typical totalizing system consists of one or more personal computers, custom software and sensors to count good copies throughout the press and/or post-press areas. Allan Janis, manager of systems and software at Rockwell Graphic Systems, says, "The sensors are usually located after each dump gate, because that's where the good copies are. But each company has it's own 'hot buttons'---the areas where they want to monitor productivity."

Totalizing systems can provide real-time counts for press and post-press equipment operators. "We are able to track papers and know how many are in the system at any given time," says Courtland Hunt of the Poughkeepsie (N.Y.) Journal. "Now our press operators never have to restart the press because they are short copies. The system has been a savings in time, money and aggravation because operators can order more papers on the run. It also brings them better awareness of where the waste is." Totalizing systems can also report total counts to help management understand what happened on a given shift or day, or on a particular press. Finally, they can supply archive counts for a range of days, editions or shifts that can be used for analysis or forecasting.

Prior to installing a totalizer, NCS typically sends in a two-person team to determine the customer's needs and recommend the number and placement of counters. Meanwhile, NCS programmers customize the software based on this input.

Training is a must. Says Janis, "You need to study your environment and what you want the system to do. Rockwell offers management training of what is available and what you can do with the information. Then, based on management input, they go in and train the operators."

Ed Ronhausen of the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times helped his operators get comfortable during their first experience with computers. "I left Windows games, like solitaire, on our new Denex Copy Track system. It helped people feel less intimidated. It made training fun rather than work."

The approach seems to be paying off. Says Ronhausen, "We installed the Denex system in December 1994 and now, a year later, we are just scratching the surface in using all the data it collects. Now we can say we printed 'X' number of copies. There is no human error on counts. It has saved us on overruns, which is key to lowering our newsprint costs. Since installation, we have saved $60,000."

Nancy Lowther is president of Lowther Training and Development in Scarborough, Ontario. Phone is (416) 282-1890.