By: E&P Staff For its greenfield printing plant at Nivelles, south of Brussels, Rossel Printing Co., printer of Le Soir and other Belgian newspapers, selected ABB, Baden, Switzerland, for software and automation systems to manage the integration and workflow.
The production control and management systems, which accept data from various remote editorial offices and manage production workflow through to three new KBA Commander six-by-two presses (with ABB controls), was operational within 12 months of the start of the new facility's construction, according to Wolfgang Felber, head of ABB's Printing Business Unit.
Rossel implemented ABB's MPS Cockpit solution, which provides overall control and a visual interface to all processes involved in newspaper production and the mailroom. MPS PlateWorkflow is used to manage plate production, from generation of RIP data to control of the three Agfa platesetters. MPS Roll Handling software was implemented for reel logistics, and MPS Insight provides browser-based remote tracking and production analysis.
Le Soir's editorial system is fully integrated with MPS Cockpit and ABB's MPS PageManager Planner, which itself is fully integrated into MPS Cockpit. To ensure that editorial users define only products that can be printed on the presses, their system is supplied with ABB's Product Structure Library, listing all printable products' structures -- including book structure, number of pages per book, color content, etc. Products from other editorial offices are defined directly in the MPS PageManager Planner.
Felber attributed the level of integration, from front end to press controls, to ABB's SPINE (Seamless Process Integration for Newspaper Enterprises) concept and technology.
The installation marks Le Soir's switch to Berliner format. The new press line will produce more than 400,000 nightly, along with weekly output of more than three million other titles during the day.
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