by Chuck Moozakis
Editor-In-Chief
Automated material handling is
leaving the reel room and entering the mailroom as newspapers look for more ways
to mechanize their production.
Case in point: The Kansas City
(Mo.) Star, which engineered its HK Systems Inc. ASRS to deliver both rolls of
newsprint and pallets of inserts from its 5,300-position ASRS that will go into
production this month (see related story,
page 1).
“Newspaper production plants
need to maximize flexibility,” said Star Vice President of Production Randy
Waters about the facility’s mechanized foundation.
An FMC Technologies' AGV retrieves a roll of newsprint at Newspaper Agency
Corp.'s new production facility in suburban Salt Lake City. NAC installed four
AGVs to ferry newsprint to its three presses.
Photo: FMC
Depending on what’s needed,
The Star’s system will move rolls downstairs to reels supporting the paper’s new
Koenig & Bauer AG pressline or upstairs to its GMA Inc.-equipped mailroom.
HK’s MTC material handling
software will communicate with GMA’s SAM inserter control software and ensure
that the proper pallet is delivered to a forklift driver who will then drop the
pallet at the correct inserter.
Once the package is assembled
and transformed into bundles, Star staffers will again use MTC to determine
which dock the finished products should be delivered to, said Doug Emmons, HK’s
account executive. “We’ll then track the pallet all the way to when it’s
delivered” to one of The Star’s 11 distribution centers “so that the paper can
validate where the pallet is sent.”
More tracking
“Newspapers are asking for a
whole new level of accountability,” Emmons said, adding that the Audit Bureau of
Circulations’ Insert Verification Service has fueled rising interest in tracking
insert performance. IVS, launched Jan. 1, aims to do for inserts what ABC
already does for circulation: verify that newspapers are delivering inserts as
promised.
And it’s not just that insert
volume is increasing; the number of versions is also on the rise. A Home Depot
insert might be produced in 20 different versions, depending upon the
marketplace, “and that complicates things and opens the door to a lot of
mistakes in the mailroom,” Emmons said.
HK recently beefed up its MTC
app, adding two interfaces to enable the software to mesh with production
planning systems from Burt Technologies Inc. and Harland Simon in addition to
GMA.
The Burt interface will be
exploited by the Denver Newspaper Agency to track inserts slated for The Denver
Post and Rocky Mountain News after it commissions a two-aisle HK ASRS next year.
Unlike The Star, DNA will use
the system only to retrieve and track inserts. Burt software will link the ASRS
to Goss International Corp. inserters that will be used to assemble the dailies.
“We expect this approach will
help give all of our customers (the confidence) that their inserts are correct
and are being tracked,” said Frank Dixon, DNA’s senior vice president of
operations.
The agency is the seventh
newspaper publisher to deploy MTC.
Insert traffic
The Dallas Morning News also
plans to use its ASRS, from Westfalia Technologies Inc., to handle only inserts.
The paper is in the midst of constructing a new postproduction facility in South
Dallas that will feature the 4,300-position ASRS along with collating and
bagging equipment from Prim Hall and Sitma USA, respectively.
“Quality was a big issue,”
said Dan Labell, Westfalia’s president. “They didn’t want a situation where if
(the insert retrieval system) went down that they wouldn’t be able to (package
the newspaper).”
The Morning News system will
encompass Westfalia’s ASRS and its Savanna.net warehouse management app.
Savanana will communicate with
forklift trucks to alert drivers where to pick up the pallets and to which
collator they should be delivered, Labell said.
The app will also connect with
software from Rockwell Automation, Burt and Enternet LLC.
“We are seeing more projects
being driven on postpress side, handling FSIs,” Labell said, adding that his
company is developing new technologies that would help newspapers automate how
completed bundles are delivered to route carriers.
Moving to AGVs
Newspaper Agency Corp., the
entity that prints The Salt Lake Tribune and Deseret Morning News, introduced
automated roll-handling when it flipped the switch on its new $88 million
production plant, said Robert Burns, senior vice president of operations.
NAC tapped FMC Technologies to
provide four AGVs to shuttle newsprint to its TKS (USA) pressline and to a day
storage area.
Press operators are just
getting used to the system, said David Oettinger, night foreman, newsprint at
NAC. “We’ve had some breaking-in issues, but it will be good once all the
growing pains are done,” he said. NAC consumes about 80 rolls a night to produce
the papers and associated publications (see related story, page 1).
Burns said he next wants to
exploit FMC’s software to track newsprint consumption and performance and funnel
that information into automated management reports.
At Post-Newsweek Media Inc.’s
commercial printing unit, Comprint, FMC is installing three modified fork
vehicles to load newsprint on the publisher’s new Mitsubishi Heavy Industries
press.
Different approach
What makes the installation
unique, according to Paul Roche, FMC’s sales manager, is that Comprint, which
prints newspapers and commercial products in suburban Washington, D.C., has
designed its production facility so that the press and reelstands occupy the
same level.
“The six reelstands are 90
degrees from the press, which means the rolls are carried on a ‘v’ table
laterally,” he said. The AGVs also have to track the large number of partial
rolls that will be produced as a result of Comprint’s multiple press runs.
To that end, the vehicles’ SGV
manager software will communicate with Harland Simon’s press production app to
determine which rolls are best tailored to a particular run, taking into account
the type of newsprint and how much is left on a roll.
“It’s a very automated
system,” Roche said. “When the roll leaves the warehouse it’s not touched
again,” from full roll to core.
Roche said FMC is working with
newspapers to determine how AGVs can be used in postproduction, performing
everything from carrying pallets to loading completed newspapers into truck
trailers.
Although The New York Times
and Chicago Sun-Times use FMC-designed pallet-handling systems, they’re based on
older technology.
“Implementation is so much
simpler; where I look where AGVs were 10 years ago, everything is so much less
expensive and more open. They don’t require special electronics any longer,”
Roche said.
Newspaper carriers and
distributors, meantime, could some day also use the same software now used to
track inserts and newsprint rolls. At least one East Coast paper is testing the
development of software that will integrate its distribution centers into its
main production plant. “It’s great accountability, all the way to the end,” said
a spokesman for the vendor working with the undisclosed daily.
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TKS targets material
handling
Although TKS (USA) is best known for its press technology, the company
also has a sister firm, KKS, whose material handling equipment TKS has
begun marketing to U.S. newspapers.
The Columbus (Ohio)
Dispatch is the first paper to buy KKS equipment, installing an
automatic stripping station that mechanically deheads and unwraps
newsprint rolls and prepares the wrapper for disposal.
The Dispatch also uses
TKS’ ARL automated newsprint loading system, as does The Star-Ledger in
Newark, N.J. The technology was also installed in Salt Lake City, where
it integrates with FMC Technologies’ AGVs to get newsprint to Newspaper
Agency Corp.’s three TKS Color Top 4-by-1 5000UD presses.
In addition to roll
handling, TKS is marketing KKS’ ASRS technology, which includes
warehouse system integration and automatic guided vehicles. It’s also
selling AGS, or automatic guided shuttles, which use floor-mounted
magnetic guidance tapes as a steering mechanism.
“Newspapers are always
looking for ways to reduce operating costs and labor,” said Greg Harabin,
president and chief executive officer of TKS (USA). “Our experience in
the Asian markets has demonstrated that after automating paster patterns
and other functions (that) papers experience virtually no paster breaks”
attributable to that area of the press.
Holding out for
ROI
As much as automation
is playing a larger role in FSI production, not every daily has taken
steps to mechanize their postpress operations.
The Boston Globe, for
example, is still manually transporting FSIs and finished packages,
according to Luis Azeredo, executive director of production. That’s
primarily because of cramped space in its Morrisey Boulevard plant, and
because Azeredo doesn’t believe the return-on-investment is clear
enough.
The Globe equipped the
45,000-square-foot postpress area with systems from GMA Inc., Quipp
Systems Inc. and Westfalia Technologies. The paper relies on a series of
wireless scanners, barcoding and GMA’s SAM software to keep track of
inserts, which range as high as 80 per week.
But, Azeredo said, “We
just don’t have the space (to automate). Instead, we do use technology
to document what human beings do.”
“We will apply
automation where we see a payback, but not at this point in time.”
Machine Design
gets back on track
Infused with new
capital and new marketing and manufacturing support, Machine Design
Service International is again supplying newspapers with roll-handling
systems.
The helping hand came
from Coastal Automation LLC, an Erie, Mich., vendor of roll-handling
equipment to the paper industry that bought Machine Design out of
liquidation last summer.
Today, MDSI has
projects under way at several newspapers, including North Jersey Media
Group and Gazette Newspapers in suburban Washington, D.C., said Andrew
M. Pienta, product manager.
It just finished up
installing a roll preparation system at Newspaper Agency Corp.’s new
plant in Salt Lake City. The system communicates with NAC’s FMC
Technologies’ AGVs to transport rolls to the press automatically. And it
wrapped up a roll delivery system for The (San Francisco) Examiner.
“In today’s market,
labor reduction is often key,” Pienta said.
In addition to roll
prep systems, MDSI markets an automatic splice tape applicator,
roll-stripping stations and press loading systems.
RFID MIA?
Radio frequency
identification, while touted as the Holy Grail for tracking shipments,
is still too expensive for newspapers.
The tags needed to
enable objects to communicate with one another via a series of tiny
transceivers, antennas and transponders, are still too costly, said Dick
Montague, director, custom engineering system group, at FKI Logistex.
“It’s still an
emerging trend, but it’s still not cost-efficient,” he said.
Instead, newspapers
are investing in material handling control software, enabling them to
track production.
“We’re seeing more of
an interest among newspapers that want to spend money on automating how
they manipulate and handle” product. That could be anything from AGVs to
chain conveyors, upenders and other material moving systems.
FKI Logistex, which
mainly focuses on bundle distribution systems such as the one it
installed for The Courier Journal in Louisville, Ky., has roll-handling
systems in place at a handful of other newspapers, including operations
in Texas and New Jersey.
“People are seeing
benefits in automation, the sweet spot for us is whether the company is
willing to spend money. There are also times where newspapers want to
automate because it’s safer,” Montague said. |
