As postpress production becomes more critical and more complex, newspapers continue to wrestle with trying to corral the diverse systems that drive their packaging and distribution.

New postproduction equipment at the Sun-Journal in Lewiston, Maine, lets the paper slice and dice zones.
Photo: Sun-Journal

Some papers solve the integration problem by going the single-vendor route. Case in point: The Bakersfield Californian, which selected Ferag Americas to equip its entire mailroom, from inserter to conveyor, in part to eliminate hassles associated with stitching together disparate systems.

“We’re changing everything,” said Alan Ferguson, The Californian’s general manager of operations, about the paper’s forthcoming mailroom. “Everything from when the paper comes through the press clear to the loading dock.”

Many options

Yet for every Californian, there are dozens of newspapers that use postpress equipment from rival vendors. In these cases, managers must cobble together the control systems needed to oversee how product flows through multiple platforms.

“Integration is the most important piece that almost everyone overlooks,” said Fred Dal Broi, vice president of production at the San Francisco Chronicle.

The newspaper (daily, 512,129; Sunday, 539,563) is on the verge of sketching out plans for a new Sunday packaging center to replace obsolete systems in Union City, Calif.

“Right now, although we are one of the top newspapers in Sunday circulation, we’re putting out our product on four (obsolete inserters), which is archaic. When you are running 30-plus inserts, the  number of passes you need to produce product is significant, and that is costly and sometimes results in upset advertisers,” Dal Broi said.

At Sun-Journal, managers had to oversee rival inserting systems.
Photo: Sun-Journal

Dal Broi has formed five teams to examine the redesign of the facility, looking at such operations as palletizing, inserting and integration.

“We want a company that will help us integrate the whole operation,” he said. “I can’t deal with having it (work together) next month. I need it now.”

To apply the thread needed to stitch rival systems together, Dal Broi is looking for help from software vendors such as Automated Publishing Solutions Inc. and Burt Technologies Inc.

Harnessing systems

The Chronicle is in the final stages of implementing Burt’s planning software and is evaluating how it might use Automated Publishing System’s Apsolute software and controls to harness legacy downstream machines into a unified system.

Dal Broi hopes to have picked the equipment vendors selected by early November, with the new facility up and running by next summer. Once that’s completed, daily and ROP postproduction workflows and systems will also be upgraded, he said.

“We’re looking for the software vendors to help us do this,” he said. “We want to get our performance and operating data in real-time; you know where everything is and that’s the answer to the puzzle that brings all of it together.”

Companies such as Enternet LLC and Burt have their mailroom planning software installed at scores of sites. The firms are seeing a lot more demand among postproduction managers with disparate systems.

“They want to be able to use any vendor that meets their needs and know that everybody can work together,” said Larry Frakes, Burt’s general manager of sales.

All together now

That’s the case at The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch, where Burt’s software is driving Heidelberg inserters and Schur palletizers. “With all three working together, they get the controls and palletizers they want,” Frakes said. “It’s not driven by a proprietary system by any one vendor.”

Frakes said Burt hopes to further extend its reach by partnering with APS, which has developed a line of processors capable of controlling a wide range of postproduction machinery.

The controllers transmit operating data to a PC, which in turn communicates with Burt’s software.

Through this conduit, job settings driving each piece of equipment are sent, automatically, eliminating the need for manual management.

“Our key objective is integration,” said Brad Calhoun, solution architect of Pensacola, Fla.-based Absolute Publishing.

“What we found is that many machine vendors take a functional approach to their equipment,” he said. “They aren’t necessarily concerned with what happens downstream. Everyone is good in taking metal and making it work on its own. But they are not so good in tying (rival) machines together.

Ad demands

Newspapers are taking steps to lasso their downstream operations even as advertisers ratchet up demands for distribution strategies that meet their needs.

In response, papers are slicing and dicing their zoning in even smaller portions. The Sun-Journal in Lewiston, Maine, for example, today can target deliveries to as many as 180 separate zones and as many as 300 in the future, said Bob McCarthy, postpress facilities manager.

Although it’s doubtful the mid-sized newspaper (daily, 35,393; Sunday, 37,970) will ever need to zone so precisely, “We’re trying to give advertisers what they want,” McCarthy said. “We’ll be able to deliver to certain neighborhoods or certain (nearby) towns.”

Part of effort

It’s part of a corporate-wide effort that saw the Sun-Journal in 2002 move into a new 16,000-square-foot production facility to improve operations.

“It might be overkill, but stores like Sears, Wal-Mart and K-mart only want to hit certain ZIP codes. Once we’re down to that level, it will take only 15 minutes to pick out which areas want to target and we can (produce the right bundles) automatically.”

To make such focused delivery a reality, however, McCarthy, along with Richard Baillargeon, packaging  and distribution manager at the Sun-Journal, had to map an integration framework that permitted the newspaper’s disparate postproduction equipment to march to the same set of orders.

It wasn’t easy. “We tried to do it all at once and it nearly killed us,” McCarthy said of initial attempts to mesh the Sun-Journal’s Publishing Business Systems’ circulation software with GMA and Heidelberg inserters and Quipp Inc. stackers.

The answer was using Burt’s planning software, in combination with NewsTec Inc.’s Newscom inserter control app, Baillargeon said. Newscom enabled the newspaper to use a single control interface to ride herd on the downstream machines.

“We were able to stitch together PBS and incorporate it into Newscom so all the data is matched,” he said. The result: each bundle is unique, bearing its own top wrapper and specific amount.

Inventing from scratch

The Journal Star in Peoria, Ill., meanwhile, is also re-evaluating how it will handle postproduction now that parent Copley Press Inc. is building a 66,000-square-foot addition that will also house a new MAN Roland Inc. press.

In June, the newspaper (79,954; Sunday, 90,215) took the first step when it purchased inserting, buffering and related equipment from GMA. The order encompassed two 16:2 SLS-3000 inserters as well as a 16-station FlexiRoll system, said John Phillips, distribution and packaging manager.

“We’re looking at more microzoning,” Phillips said, adding that the new equipment will give the Journal Star greater flexibility.

The goal: to transfer the daily’s PBS circ data to downstream equipment and make distribution decisions based on more accurate subscriber totals, something that’s not possible with current manual systems, Phillips said.

“If we can talk to circ, then we will be receiving more real numbers and that’s our ultimate goal. That’s been one of our inherent problems (with the existing systems) because we’re not dealing with real-time data. Sometimes it’s as much as six or seven days old.”