The Boston Globe and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. signed an agreement with Rockwell Automation to upgrade control systems on a total of 13 Goss printing presses.

Both newspapers purchased the PrintLogix press control system, which Rockwell said is an integrated set of components for the planning, operation and tracking of newspaper production in the pressroom.

The PrintLogix system controls and monitors ink, dampening and print registration and includes operator interface and management information system functions.

The Boston Globe (Monday-Friday, 478,735; Saturday, 446,760; Sunday, 705,017) and the Sun-Sentinel (daily, 261,822; Sunday, 371,957) will be the first newspapers to use the Microsoft Windows 2000-based PrintLogix control solution. Prior systems used Microsoft Windows NT.

With the upgrades, both newspapers will incorporate Allen Bradley PlantView supervisory workstations designed to plan and schedule printing jobs and monitor and report on press performance and create plate and webbing layouts using Rockwell’s auto imposition tool. The upgrade will also include new operator consoles with PressView software for centralized operator control of the presses.

The Boston Globe, a New York Times Co. newspaper, will upgrade controls on eight Goss Metroliner presses. Backup servers will be placed in each of The Globe’s two production facilities.

The press control upgrade also includes the PrintLogix unit and folder controls, which will use Allen-Bradley ControlLogix-based controllers with PrintLogix digital ink input and output modules and PanelView operator interface terminals at each printing press unit. These controls will be phased in on a unit-by-unit basis to minimize any impact on production. The presses are expected to be upgraded and running with all new controls by this month.

“After evaluating several vendors, we chose Rockwell Automation because the company’s approach offered the best expansion capabilities and gave us the best value,” said John Bopp, production director, at The Boston Globe.

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel will upgrade press controls on five Goss Colorliner presses. Along with the control upgrades, the new system will include a production monitoring and control system with Web-based reporting capabilities. This will allow operators to monitor production status from local and remote locations.

Rockwell Automation will work with the Sun-Sentinel’s press operators to provide custom reports, including a press run status and packaging run report. This will allow the south Florida newspaper to track and automate many reports that were previously completed manually.

Newspaper personnel will be able to generate their own customer reports using the data collected within the system. The upgrade will also include a hot backup file server cluster arrangement that will help prevent production disruptions. The presses are scheduled to be upgraded and running with new controls by October.

Other installations Rockwell is working on include the Spartanburg (S.C.) Herald Journal, which is upgrading the press controls on its Goss Headliner press. The Times Publishing Co. in Erie, Pa.,is working on a DC drives control upgrade and The Morning Call in Allentown, Pa. started a project to upgrade 20 drives on two presses.