You've got good, smart, motivated, loyal and committed workers. They've been trained. So why did your publisher just drop by your office to talk to you about a "little problem?"
Gulp. Maybe you need to call in a consultant.
At Tucson Newspapers, they called Frank Drazen, an ex-Goss employee. While speaking at a short session on ink-and-water balance, Drazen suggested reducing waste by running the press at 5,000 instead of 10,000 copies per hour on startup. NAA Materials Manager Ruth Felland Bohner says, "This seems like such a simple idea, yet it's viewed as a novel approach in the industry."
In Tucson, that idea whetted their appetites, and left them wanting more.
So Vice President of Operations Wayne Bean, Pressroom Manager John Lundgren and Assistant Pressroom Manager Thomas B. Walter started a training program. It took them about six months to develop an outline, put together manuals and workbooks, and select participants. "We started our program based on what Drazen did," says Bean, "and added our own ideas."
The result was the six-session, voluntary Optimum Quality Training Program. It allowed pressmen to interact with each other and their supervisors around six topics: basic pressmanship, ink/water balance and dampening, maintenance and troubleshooting, reel tension pasters and roll handling, and consistent print quality.
The sessions relied on both in-house and invited experts. The newspaper also invited subscribers and advertisers to explain how the pressroom affects them. For example, "Sam Levitz Jr., who owns the biggest furniture store in town, brought tear sheets to show us the progress we're making in the quality of ads," says Walter. "We were shocked and happy that he took the time to do it."
The newspaper paid one hour of overtime, and the pressmen donated an hour of their own time to attend each two-hour session. Carl Hinton, who does press maintenance and went to several sessions, says, "I'd do anything to get insight on what I'm working on--It makes the job more fun. It has helped the whole shop. People have a better attitude regarding the work going out the door. We have more professionalism, and it's getting better every day."
Because the sessions were interactive, crews had an opportunity to talk and management to listen. Managers found that although the press crew had been trained, there was no agreement on the best way to do things. Says Lundgren, "There was no consistency of training--When someone wanted to know something, we'd tell them to go see Larry, Curly or Moe. Everyone would give their opinion."
NAA's Bohner says Tucson got her vote because its methods are applicable to almost any paper in the industry and showed solid results: savings of $150,868 (25.25 percent) from the 1995 budget in production waste and $83,191 (19.38 percent) in printed waste.
L. Carol Christopher is a regular contributor to TechNews.
Sources
Ruth F. Bohner, NAA, 11600 Sunrise Valley Drive, Reston, Va., 20191. E-mail, fellr@naa.org; phone, (703) 648-1279; fax, (703) 648-1216.
Wayne Bean, Carl Hinton, John Lundgren and Thomas B. Walter, Tucson Newspapers, 4850 S. Park Ave., P.O. Box 26887, Tucson, Ariz., 85714. Phone, (602) 573-4400; fax, (602) 573-4294.
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