INDIANAPOLIS — The Great Lake/Midstates
Newspaper Production conference attendees had the privilege of receiving the
first public tour of The Indianapolis Star’s new 260,000-square-foot Pulliam
Production Center. The center was named after the publishing family who led The
Star over the past five decades.
The tour coincided with The
Indianapolis Star putting its new $72-million production facility to work,
producing advertising sections on the first of four MAN Roland GeoMAN presses.
The remaining presses are scheduled to print both daily and Sunday editions of
the paper by mid-July.
The new press hall, which
encompasses over 30,672-square feet on two levels, was built from the ground up
to make the Gannett-owned property a very highly automated newspaper.
Richard Rinehart, PPC project
director, notes that the GeoMAN that was assembled first, designated as Press A,
went into regular production at the end of January. Job one involves printing
400,000 copies of a four-page TMC advertising jacket on a weekly basis.
More than 200 attendees of the Great Lakes/Midstates
Newspaper Production Conference toured The Indianapolis Star’s new Pulliam
Production Center last month. Ron Sams, MAN Roland’s regional sales
representative (second from left) reviews details of one of the GeoMAN
presslines with (l-r) Kevin Bartlett, director of production for the Daily
Southtown in Chicago; Blake A. Dickie, director of production at Pioneer Press
in Northfield, Ill.; and Mark Juratich, engineering director for the Chicago
Sun-Times.
Photos by Mary L. Van Meter
“The press is measuring up to our
expectations, as far as what we’ve done so far, but we haven’t pushed it to
the limit yet,” Rinehart said. “Think of it as an athlete in training. We’re
running 400-meter warm-up laps now but when we get into full production it will
be a marathon.”
The sequencing up to that marathon
effort will involve production of all of the Star’s non-newspaper preprints on
Press A by the end of this month. Then on May 1, the next two GeoMAN systems,
Press B and Press C, are scheduled to start ramping up. By May 13, A, B and C
are scheduled to be producing all daily and three Sunday advance sections of the
Star in addition to numerous advertising sections. That will make them
responsible for printing all of the paper’s feature material as well as its
classifieds.
The final GeoMAN, Press D will begin
to roll on May 15, and by July the entire paper will be produced on the new MAN
Roland presses.
But the ramp-up won’t end with the
production of the Star and all the advertising sections that help drive its
profitability. Press D is equipped with a variable web width former that enables
it to produce wide broadsheets, deep-format tabloids, and quarter-folds. “We’ll
be able to do our TV book on it, as well as pure commercial work,” Rinehart
noted.
It also appears that the performance
of Press A has attracted new business for Press D — prior to the fourth press
even turning a cylinder.
“We have had several key
advertisers ask us to bid on printing multimillion-piece advertising work,”
Rinehart said. “The future of this business seems very promising.”
Producing those quantities on a
routine basis shouldn’t be a problem for the GeoMAN presses. Features like
shaftless drive technology, Pecom command and control, turbo dampening and an
automatic paper infeed, equip each press to produce 75,000 papers per hour.
The Indianapolis Star’s GeoMAN
presses have a 50-inch web width to produce a 12.5-inch page. Their cutoff is
21.5 inches. They reside on a tabletop 400 feet long and 27.5 feet wide, and
stretch out longer than a football field — 375.5 feet. They weigh in at 2,100
tons.
One of the reasons that the
multi-press installation is proceeding so well is that The Star installed a
bridge crane, similar to the ones in steel mills. It provides a skyhook that can
lift and quickly transport heavy press components anywhere in the pressroom.
Once the installation is complete, the crane will be used as a maintenance tool,
assigned to maneuver cylinder repairs and lift other heavy elements.
Another contributor to the smooth
launch is the advanced training MAN Roland is providing to The Star’s press
crews.
“Last summer most of our
maintenance people and a few press supervisors went to (MAN Roland’s
headquarters in) Augsburg, Germany, for intensive component training. Rinehart
recalled. “Additionally, all of our press operators who will be working at the
PPC went through a week of classroom and a week of simulator training. That
works for pressmen just like a flight simulator does for pilots. We want them to
learn on and get feedback from the computer rather than on a multimillion-dollar
press.”
Hands-on training began in October
at the Pulliam Production Center and it won’t end until every member of every
press crew knows his or her role in the operation of the four GeoMAN presses.
“The training MAN Roland provides is one of the company’s strong points,”
Rinehart said.
The project director also praised
the installation technicians who are installing the press, noting that a crew of
over 25 specialists were flown in last summer from Germany and are still on the
job. “They’re polite, they’re professional, and they do what you request,”
he said. “That makes for a trouble-free installation.”
The smoothness of the MAN Roland
ramp-up means that The Indianapolis Star is on target with its three primary
objectives for implementing its new presses, its advanced roll handling system
and its new automated mailroom.
Goal one is to increase the amount
of color opportunities the paper could offer its advertisers and bring to its
readers. The GeoMAN presses more than double the daily total from 12 color pages
to 28.
The paper’s second objective is to
ensure that it can remain in a straight mode to speed production and provide
more pagination options every day. “This allows us to have the latest
editorial deadlines, while providing the earliest press off-time, which benefits
our circulation department and readers,” Rinehart pointed out.
The final goal is to reduce labor
expenses. Once all of the automated advances are in place, from roll handling to
pressroom to mail room, The Star will have reduced its payroll by the equivalent
of 88 full-time employees.
While reducing labor costs, the new
production center will also help to expand community awareness for The Star,
among its readers and its advertisers. The construction and outfitting of the
center is being documented by a photo-filled progress page in The Star’s
Sunday edition once a month, as well as on the Newspapers & Technology Web
site at www.newsandtech.com.
As the press installation winds
down, The Star is strategically locating nine DVD-driven presentation stations
throughout the facility. They will convey the PPC story to visiting groups, with
video clips and computer graphics
“This way, if a Boy Scout troop or
an advertiser’s marketing department comes in when we’re not running, the
video screens will show them what goes on in each area of the plant,” Rinehart
noted.
A community room, capable of hosting
groups as large as 144 people, also will be a permanent part of the center,
providing a venue for neighborhood meetings and social events. Once the center
is completed, The Star will conduct a series of open house events, so that the
people can meet the presses.
“We want to let the Indianapolis
community know that we’re investing $72 million here because we value our
readers and advertisers, and that our new production center will provide them
with a better printed, more colorful newspaper,” Rinehart said.
