In San Diego, we process and insert about 75 different preprint titles, totaling about 12 million individual preprints, during a normal week. That growing business led us in early 1994 to refurbish our packaging center. The mission, as we saw it, was to package newspapers properly. This included:
Our strategy was to implement a strong management and control system. We wanted to minimize entering information into individual inserters, and we wanted to access online information from advertising and circulation.
We chose three Prima Software modules from Sheridan Systems [now Heidelberg Finishing Systems Inc.] of Dayton, Ohio: the Warehouse Assistant, the Planning Assistant and the Production Assistant.
We receive all preprints at our off-site warehouse and use bar-code technology to enter information about them into our database. The Warehouse Assistant assigns and tracks their positions.
We also have a just-in-time delivery system. The Prima System says, "OK, you're about to run zone number such-and-such with package number such-and-such, and you need the following preprints brought over from the warehouse." On a screen, it locates those preprint skids and shows how many you need. If you've got split loads, where some of the preprints are going into today's paper and some are going in two days later or the next week, the Warehouse Assistant takes care of it.
The Planning Assistant interfaces with our advertising and circulation systems. It receives all information regarding pre-print scheduling, account names, account numbers, and the size and shape of the insert. It tells us whether the preprint is a single sheet, a broadsheet or a tabloid. It also defines the packages we will produce that day.
The Production Assistant receives planning information from the Planning Assistant and delivers work orders to individual machines. It also produces truck manifests.
In our control room, you can find out where you are in the press run, the number of copies that have entered the packaging department and the number of copies that have gone out the door. You can find out cycle speeds on all of your inserting machines and what the net production is on each machine. You also can find out about repairs, multiples, downtime, uptime, efficiency ratings and other information.
We know what zone went out when, on which machine handled it and who the operator was. We can create a statistical database that will track it all for us. We've got automatic repair, production monitoring, zone control and the ability to run diagnostics on the system as well.
This system has done a tremendous job for us--it works well and it's reliable. If we were to do it all over again, we would certainly make the same choice.
Jerry Thomas is the production director at The San Diego Union-Tribune. Phone is (619) 293-1613; fax, (619) 293-2337.
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