Despite encouraging industry forecasts, saving money by reducing operating costs continues to be an important initiative for newspapers of all sizes.

Case in point: Reducing waste. Among the many day-to-day operations newspapers perform, cutting waste offers a high return at a low cost.

Consider pad, defined as the excess copies produced to satisfy home-delivery and single-copy orders.

For the most part, initiatives to reduce pad, also known as non-paid good copies, originate within and focus on individual departments.

But pad should be considered a systemic issue, relating to the entire newspaper operation. Frequently, attempts to reduce pad within the boundaries of each department overlook opportunities to rethink the role of pad in a newspaper system.

Two forms

Pad appears in two broad functional forms: forecasting and operating.

Forecasting pad are those additional copies built into a press run to account for potential shortages that may result in meeting paid circulation demand. It’s most apparent among Sunday products (such as purchased TV books and printed ROP sections) due to longer lead times.

By contrast, operating pad are the additional copies printed to cover spoils and shortages during the production and distribution process. These would include copies printed to offset spoilage during insert runs.

By determining how forecasting and operating pad occurs, newspapers can achieve ongoing savings in a number of areas, including:

*Improving press order forecasting of off-deadline product.

*Reducing pad needed for spoilage and shortages.

*Improving workflow to minimize pad dependency and double-counting.

*Increasing accountability of single-copy returns.

Pad reduction methodology

The objective of a pad study is to minimize, not eliminate, pad. Pad, at appropriate levels, is a cost-effective means of managing a variable production environment.

Without proper controls, pad becomes excessive and costly. One medium-sized metropolitan newspaper revealed it spent more than $1.5 million annually to print non-paid copies, according to a recent study.

But newspapers can easily uncover sources of pad, assess needs and determine appropriate quantities. To do that, they should do the following:

*Conduct hands-on observations and interact with the front-line individuals who control and use pad.

*Develop maps of the production order process and corresponding sources of pad.

*Build a case study of the press order for two days: the most constrained daily edition and a Sunday edition.

*Track press order fulfillment during the same case study days.

*Track leftover copies during the case study days.

*Identify functional uses of the pad quantities.

*Benchmark best practices.

These core steps will serve as a platform to reveal pad issues and identify tangible improvement opportunities.

Pad reduction opportunities

The spirit of a pad study is to tighten and rebuild, from the ground up, the need for pad, the controls to prevent misuse and the reports to track additional opportunity.

Some common themes that arise out of such a study are:

*Incumbent practice - Quite often pad quantities were defined generations ago. A common response to inquiries about establishment of pad levels is, “I don’t know.  It’s always been that way.”

*Lack of controls and accountability - Many newspapers have over-empowered employees to alter press orders. Process mapping may reveal lack of central accountability and excessive steps in the press order process. Consequently, no one is truly aware of how much pad is printed each day and night. Controls become even more relevant in deterring fraudulent processing of single-copy returns.

*Breaking the addiction - Resistance to change is natural. Newspaper operations that depend on heavy doses of pad have trained employees to depend upon pad or use it as a crutch. Teams should seize opportunities to break molds and norms.

*Technology - Software doesn’t always work without occasional modification. In one recent study, a newspaper’s circulation application couldn’t generate distinct press orders and pad quantities by press run, within the same edition. As a consequence, the paper was forced to train employees to alter the press order taken from the circulation database. The result was an expert system difficult to supervise and account for. Nobody understood how much pad was needed except the expert who mentally adjusted the press order prior to each press run. The solution? The app was edited to provide distinct orders by product, eliminating the need for experts to manage press orders.

*Leverage synergies - A systemic approach to pad reduction will reveal opportunities to use pad cross-functionally. In most every case, newspaper department managers point to one or two instances where they needed all of their allocated pad to satisfy demand. Indeed, these managers insist they would have been lost unless they had access to all of their allocated pad. Yet because pad is rarely used at peak levels in every department at the same time, unused pad upstream can become a viable source for downstream pad requirements. A few examples include using production pad for field shortages, single-copy returns for tearsheets and B-copies for employees.

* Forecasting errors - Maintaining historical data of paid circulation orders helps make forecasts more accurate. An equally important opportunity is reducing the window between the order deadline and publication. This can be accomplished by exploiting long-standing relationships with vendors that supply such products as comics and TV guides, but it also applies to in-house ROP schedules.

* Lack of procedures - Recently, at a newspaper that was constantly hindered by press overruns, an investigation revealed that the press crew was not receiving timely notification and verification of copy count from the mailroom. Implementing procedures to ensure communication between the mailroom and the press room solved the problem.

* Continuous improvement - Finally, maintaining and continuing pad reductions requires a standard reporting system. Monthly or quarterly reviews should be used to monitor progress and revisit pre-defined pad levels.

Darin Miller is senior process consultant at McClier. He can be reached at 303.228.3061 or by e-mail at darin.miller@mcclier.com.