A suburban New York newspaper is taking the ancient Greek aphorism “know thyself” to heart.

The Times Herald-Record in Middletown, N.Y., has cut thousands of dollars out of its production budget over the past several years through evaluation and clear intradepartmental communication at its print facility, said Production Director Fred Stanton.

The paper, he said, made a lot of changes and improvements to decrease production costs.

“In the first year alone (2002) we were able to cut 25 percent out of our production budget, excluding newsprint,” he said. Before launching the improvement project, the paper regularly missed 40 percent of its out-the-door deadlines because of downtime, “which was terrible,” Stanton said.

Hits deadlines

Today, The Times Herald-Record (daily, 79,913; Sunday 86,519) is out the door as scheduled more than 90 percent of the time, Stanton said, thanks to pinpointing the issues fueling downtime in the pressroom.

 

 “When you look at downtime, it costs money because there is extra newsprint waste, labor, materials and potential lost leadership,” Stanton said. “What we did first was track and address downtime to see what was causing (the downtime) in all the departments.”

One of the first steps the paper took to increase efficiency was to slow down its Goss International Corp. Metroliner press. Although the machine can produce between 60,000 and 65,000 copies per hour, The Times Herald-Record throttled back the press to a 50,000-copy-per-hour clip, Stanton said.

That reduced the paper’s web breaks, paster misses and made for better coordination in the postpress department.

“One of the big turnarounds was putting the 50,000-cph limit on the press,” Stanton said.  “I tell production directors that and they want to know how to put those speed limits on (their own) presses after they get back to the plant.”

The paper reduced its paster misses, meantime, by adhering strictly to one pattern. The result: The Times Herald-Record now boasts a paster completion percentage of 99.7 percent.

Stanton and other managers took the same approach to identify where they could optimize operations in the mailroom, which was suffering from maintenance and worker performance issues.

The paper beefed up its postpress foundation, which consists of four inserters from Quipp Systems Inc. unit Newstec.

 “We’ve done some equipment upgrades, mainly in the mailroom,” Stanton said.

Three 15:2 machines are used for evening production while the fourth, a 24:2 device, is used for daytime operations. All the machines are equipped with Newstec’s Newscom inserter software, which enables The Times Herald-Record to produce and distribute zoned bundles.

Reaching goals

Each day, the paper sets production goals based on past information and the volume of print jobs expected.

“You don’t want to expect more than what is possible or you are setting up everybody for failure, but you don’t want to set the bar too low and then everyone gets complacent with sub-par performance,” Stanton said, adding that maintaining clear communication among the paper’s departments is key.

“The pressroom has to understand what the mailroom needs and the mailroom has to understand what distribution needs,” Stanton said.

Staff performance is measured on whether or not the last bundle makes it out the door on time.

Everyone has to work together to accomplish this, Stanton said. “If the pressroom is 100 percent every day and the mailroom is 50 percent it doesn’t work,” he added.

When monthly goals are met, Stanton rewards the staff with a pizza party.