Newspapers are viewing automation with renewed
urgency as they look for ways to pare costs.
Consider The Kansas City (Mo.) Star: Automation
is a key reason why the newspaper will be able to build its new $199 million
production complex in a cramped two-block downtown. (See related story, page
10.)
AGVs ready for action at North Jersey Media’s
Rockaway, N.J. production plant.
Photo: AGV Products
The site’s physical restrictions forced plant
engineers to concoct a design requiring “multiple levels” of production,
said Mike Pusich, vice president and director of newspaper operations for the
Austin Co., the plant’s designer.
That, in turn, meant The Star (daily, 295,578;
Sunday, 377,765) had to find systems capable of automatically retrieving
materials stored on various floors and transporting those goods to presses and
post-production systems located in other areas of the 424,000-square-foot plant.
Critical link
“It’s a crucial part of the design,” Pusich
said of the HK Systems-developed automatic storage and retrieval system The Star
will ultimately use to feed its four KBA Commander presses.
Moreover, HK’s system will give Austin
engineers and architects the flexibility of packing more press and postpress
production systems in a vertical, rather than horizontal, footprint, thus saving
space and giving the newspaper more flexibility.
Finally, The Star’s ASRS will give parent
Knight Ridder a wealth of information and data corporate accountants and
analysts can use to check the quality of the web rolls used to feed the press.
The info will dovetail into Knight Ridder’s existing management system in real
time, allowing users to react quickly if circumstances warrant.
ASRS adds tools
The emergence of ASRS portends significant
changes in the role automation plays within newspaper pressrooms. Boasting
robust capabilities and features, such as the ability to retrieve and deliver a
wide variety of materials to multiple locations, these systems can help
newspapers deploy modern warehouse management and materials logistics tools.
The Omaha (Neb.) World-Herald, when it opened its
new production facility in 2001, was among the first newspapers to use an ASRS.
The Aurosys system, built by MAN Roland Inc., was part of an overarching
strategy to automate whenever and wherever possible, said Kristy Gerry, director
of production.
Making it work
“Automation was one of the key missions,”
Gerry said of the World-Herald’s $125 million plant, dubbed The Freedom
Center.
Mechanizing processes made it possible, for
example, for the World-Herald (daily, 196,326; Sunday, 242,631) to use a single
system to feed its GeoMAN presses as well as support its packaging operations.
Newsprint is delivered to the newspaper via
railroad cars. The rolls, along with any palletized inserts, are then weighed
and inventoried.
Two automated cranes take the rolls and pallets
to 10-high bay storage racks; the racks can store more than 4,200 rolls or
pallets.
When rolls are needed, they are retrieved and
transported through a 164-foot tunnel under a downtown street to the presses and
inserting machines.
After printing, other automated systems — such
as strappers and bundle turners from Samuel Strapping Systems — come into
play; the final product is loaded onto trucks as bundled newspapers ready to be
delivered to their final destination.
Spurred improvements
The plant’s automation has sparked an array of
operating improvements for the World-Herald, Gerry said, but perhaps none as
noticeable as a sharp reduction in waste due to improper handling.
“Waste that occurs as a result of transit and
handling is now negligible,” she said.
The ASRS, by tracking the quality and origin of
rolls and pallets, has also provided the newspaper with more reliable data. That’s
made it possible to accurately track inventory levels and allowed the newspapers’
internal auditing team to rely more on the information flowing through the
application and less on requiring a personal verification of stock on hand.
“They can trust the database,” Gerry said.
For now, Gerry said World-Herald managers are
examining how they can further massage the data as they build a more robust
database with the information they are acquiring.
“We’ll also be looking to determine where we
can save some time,” Gerry said. “The first year we’ve been diagnosing
what the automation systems offer; the next step is to build options and make
choices.”
Identifying benefits
The Post-Standard in Syracuse, N.Y., is also in
the process of implementing some of the benefits its ASRS technology is capable
of delivering, said Production Director Mike Stern. Among the most visible:
inventory control.
“Newspapers are starting to recognize the costs
and potential benefits associated with storing and automated tracking of
inventory,” he said. Automated systems, with their ability to generate
management information, “give us an opportunity to follow suit with other
industries, where the end-user is looking to their suppliers to deliver with
shorter notice and thus bear the cost of storing product.”
For years, other industries have been enjoying
the savings that this technology affords, notably the automobile industry with
its “just-in-time” strategy of delivery of parts to the assembly line.
“Newspapers are now in a position to look to
their suppliers for answers,” Stern said.
The newspaper (daily, 126,760; Sunday, 180,624)
installed an ASRS system last year, following its migration to a new six-high
tower WIFAG OF 70 press underpinning its revamped facility.
The ASRS, made by Jervis B. Webb, was engineered
to support the space-constrained design of the Post-Standard’s downtown site,
in which the press’ eight reelstands are located in the basement. The building’s
design does not support long-term storage of inventory.
“I call it a newsprint delivery system,” said
Stern. “At the point the ASRS picks up the newsprint, no human intervention is
required at the reelstands. The system operates as promised.”
Automated systems also envelope The Knoxville
(Tenn.) News-Sentinel’s new printing and distribution plant, which in February
kicked off live production.
The plant also uses an Aurosys ASRS to shuttle
newsprint to the MAN Roland RegioMAN press. But the newspaper’s
40,000-square-foot packaging center is equally draped in automation, said Ted
Milligan, director of operations.
“We purchased as much (automation) as we
possibly could get,” Milligan said of the $50 million production plant, which
will enable The News-Sentinel to print, insert, bundle and make ready for
delivery finished product mechanically.
Straps and stacks
To that end, The News-Sentinel (daily, 112,017;
Sunday, 153,718) is the first U.S. daily to be equipped with GMA Inc.’s
NewsPal palletizer, an automated system that takes strapped bundles of finished
product, stacks them on a pallet and puts them on a wrapping machine. From
there, the bundles are forklifted and placed on delivery trucks.
The paper is also the first site to use GMA’s
SLS-3000 inserters, which automatically govern the flow of newspapers coming off
the press to match inserting capabilities.
“Everything is totally computerized and will
tie into a [management information system],” Milligan said, allowing The
News-Sentinel to plunk all of its operating, accounting and packaging
information into a single database.
Intelligent AGVs
Even newspapers that aren’t adding ASRS as a
foundation are investing in automation technologies. Singapore Press Holdings,
which publishes more than a dozen newspapers reaching more than 2.5 million
subscribers, is installing 34 new self-guided vehicles to ferry newsprint
throughout two plants, said Roland Lau, SPH’s executive vice president of
production.
Lau said the laser-guided SGVs, manufactured by
FMC Technologies, will help the publisher “optimize” staff and “ensure
consistent and timely delivery of rolls to the presses.”
The SGVs will be feeding newsprint from a central
warehouse to two adjoining plants: one housing four Goss International
Colorliners encompassing 40 reelstands; the other four KBA Commanders with 28
reelstands. The size and complexity of SPH’s press configuration are
well-suited to the SGVs’ laser-guided design, Lau said.
“It is expected to be better in terms of
tracking and communications,” he said. “The system should facilitate
temporary relocating an SGV route to allow repairs to the floor that otherwise
cannot be done in the case of [wire-guided AGVs],” he said.
Data collected from the SGVs will also allow SPH
to track newsprint quality and performance. The SGVs have been deployed since
late last year with the project slated for completion later this summer.
| Newspapers plumbing
benefits of automation
By Chuck Moozakis
Editor-In-Chief
Automation has become more prevalent in
newspaper production plants, but the industry is just beginning to tap
its benefits, suppliers say.
Better control over raw materials, more
accurate consumption data and higher-quality output are only a few
benefits automation can yield.
Production directors are getting “much
more information available at the press,” said Don Holdenrid, director
of sales and marketing at AGV Products Inc.
AGV focuses on newspapers that want to
automate their material handling capabilities without necessarily taking
the step to deploy a comprehensive automatic storage and retrieval
system. Beyond installing new AGVs, the company has upgraded dozens of
existing vehicles at newspapers, in the process replacing proprietary
control systems with PC-based applications.
“Retrofit is a huge market,”
Holdenrid said. The addition of PC controls means data can flow back and
forth to the press as well as other management and accounting systems.
“This provides a lot of information
that can dovetail with existing management systems,” Holdenrid added.
Bridge to data
This bridge, analysts say, enables
publishers to tap into databases that generate such information as
consumption reports, web breaks, inventory management and warehouse
management, all at a click of the mouse.
Newspapers such as The Seattle Times and
the San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News are using such integrated management
systems with positive results.
The Times, for example, uses data it
obtains from its upgraded AGVs to support an aggressive predictive
maintenance strategy, said Frank Pavia, vice president of operations.
“From our perspective, having an open
control system was most important,” he said. “We’re very big on
intelligence and predictive maintenance and we needed a more open
system.”
Suppliers are also working with
newspapers as they put their AGVs to new uses, such as picking up and
retrieving pallets of ad materials slated to be inserted into the final
product.
“The key is labor savings and getting
things where they need to go,” said Mark Longacre, vice president of
marketing at FMC Technologies. “We can read a barcode, put it on an
SQL database and whatever the customer wants we can definitely track the
exact time a roll was loaded onto the press or a pallet was delivered,”
he said.
Pallet management is a cornerstone
of The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch’s new distribution strategy, said Del
Varney, vice president of production operations.
The newspaper is in the process of
installing Schur Packaging palletizers and shrink-wrappers from
Craftsman Newspaper Production Systems in a bid to automate as much of
the packaging as possible, Varney said. “We had a tray system where
individual bundles would go the truck; now we will be able to send
entire pallets.”
That will help The Dispatch streamline
its packaging operations, fine-tune zoning and help support its
distribution strategy, in which papers are sent to subscribers and
retailers from depots ringing Columbus.
AGVs themselves, meanwhile, are also
going through a metamorphosis that goes beyond switching out controls.
The vehicles are being liberated from their wire-guided constraints as
laser-guided controls become more prevalent. This allows newspapers to
react quickly to changes on the production floor and also permits
continuous communication with the devices. Programmable laser bumpers
stop the vehicles in a blink of an eye, ensuring safety. |
