Production All-Stars, Press: Thomas P. Lombardo

By: In one sense, Thomas P. Lombardo began his long career at The New York Times simply because he needed a job, any job. "I was in college in 1975, playing football at C.W. Post, married, my wife was pregnant, and I needed something quickly," he recalls.

But newspapers were already in his blood. Lombardo's grandfather was a circulation driver for New York's Daily News. His father was a driver for the Times, who suggested he get a father-son union card and go down to the shape-up on weekends. A year later, he made it on the union list as a driver.

"Once I got a taste of the business, I was hooked," Lombardo says. The driver's job was the beginning of a 32-year career at the Times, which concluded with his retirement in June at age 55, as vice president for production.

Early on, the Times spotted Lombardo's talent. Within two years, he was named delivery foreman. Then he became general foreman for delivery at the paper's Carlstadt, N.J., plant. By 1987, mentored in the operations of the pressroom and mailroom by Tom Cox, he was plant manager. The following year, as group director of production facilities, he was planning what would become the industry's state-of-the-art plant in Edison, N.J.

Lombardo's career encompassed the Times' greatest period of both production quantity and quality. It spanned the era of doing more with more ? and the era of doing all that's possible with less. "I've been involved in opening plants and closing plants," Lombardo says. "I most prefer openings."

The first plant shutterings came in Carlstadt ? the plant that had given Lombardo his introduction to production ? and later at the old Times Square headquarters on 43rd Street.

"With 43rd and Carlstadt, you were closing, knowing you were building something bigger and better. So you had that attitude of, OK, let's move on to new technology, new training, new quality," Lombardo says. Their replacements, in Edison and College Point, N.Y., allowed the metropolitan Times editions to run color every day, to operate double runs for more efficiencies, to implement computer-to-plate technology, and to automate the packaging center.

"When you look at what we've just experienced, there's a kind of melancholy," Lombardo adds. "We opened Edison in 1992, and in 16 short years we closed it."

Plant openings are more complicated than closings, Lombardo concluded. Some byproducts of the new plants were landmark agreements with New York City newspaper unions that over decades had developed fearsome reputations. Having the chance to open two plants was even better, he says.

"With the history of having opened Edison, we were able to say, if we had a chance to do it over again, what would we do?" says Lombardo, who was College Point's first plant manager.

His answer was, and is, simple: Invest more in preparing employees for the move to a new plant. "These were people who had worked in Manhattan in the bowels of the old building, and had never seen Edison," he says. "Many never had the experience of printing in color."

Lombardo set out to make them feel like insiders. In orientation sessions running three or four days, production executives and others came back to a common theme: What College Point meant to the future of the Times, and the newspaper industry.

It was a strategy that paid off: "I'm most proud that we were up and running within six months ? we were absolutely, 100% full-bore within six months of opening the building."

That's one reason Lombardo became known inside the Times as the "product-management guru," says President and General Manager Scott Heekin-Canedy. He notes Lombardo left behind a mini-Web site on the paper's Intranet with guidelines and best practices for managing big projects: "Tom's thoughtful and analytical approach to his many projects will continue to have a lasting influence on our business for many years to come."

Career Highlights
Joined the Times as a delivery driver, 1976; promoted to delivery foreman in 1977

Became manager of Times' Carlstadt, N.J., plant, 1987; began planning for opening Edison, N.J., plant

As group director of production facilities, 1982-92, introduced predictive maintenance, including first computer analysis of press vibration

Edison plant opened, Carlstadt plant closed, 1993

College Point plant's first manager, 1997; negotiated landmark agreements reducing staffing levels

Production vice president from 2004 to 2008