By: E&P Staff MAN Roland has software and equipment installation projects under way this spring in the United States and Canada.
The New York Times Co. selected MAN Roland's printnet production-management system to streamline advertising production at The New York Times and Boston Globe, where specification and planning are under way.
Printnet Newspaper automates and networks all aspects of production, from ad entry to printing, to speed production and cut costs.
The New York Times Co. will implement printnet modules for pagination, ad management, and page layout, interfacing the system with SAP's IS-Media Industry Solution, which the company also uses. The company's 95,769-circulation Worcester Telegraph & Gazette, also is a part of this initiative.
MAN said connecting printnet and SAP will create "a seamless workflow that integrates the ad order process with placement, layout and print production," enabling the papers "to respond more quickly and efficiently to changing advertiser demands and monitor ad flow even more effectively."
According to MAN, the company also will use printnet to help improve edition planning, "better organize its placement of filler ads, banners and slugs, provide standby ad-management services, and, by implementing a unified production network, "help standardize operations across departments and across newspapers."
On the hardware side, MAN will be installing its two largest presses for U.S. and Canadian newspaper publishing groups.
Journal Register Co. will replace a Goss Cosmo press with a 75,000-iph MAN Roland Geoman to serve its Michigan cluster at the Macomb Daily's expanded plant in Clinton Township.
Providing more color, enhanced print quality and increased productivity, the new press is expected to increase color capacity and improve quality and productivity, in the company's effort to reach more suburban-Detroit readers and advertisers.
Michigan Production Vice President Pat Eagan cited the company's success with a Geoman using the same double folder in its Exton, Pa., plant as a reason for the press selection.
The Geoman will consist of three eight-couple towers, four reelstands, a 2:5:5/2:3:3 jaw-type folder (horizontal splitting enables it to function as two independent folders for two different products) and two MAN Pecom control consoles. Press crews will receive preinstallation training as part of MAN's printservices package.
Automation will include makeready and the QuickStart module, which accelerates start-ups and reduces waste by allowing crews to preset ink profiles.
The plant's new, 15,000-square-foot pressroom "will bring us to about 45,000 square feet," said Eagan. He added, "We also will be gaining a bay for newsprint storage once our old press is removed."
Initiating an extensive technology makeover, Canada's Quebecor Inc. is constructing two $110 million plants equipped with 86,000-iph Colorman presses and MAN Roland pressroom automation to produce several newspapers and provide commercial printing capacity.
A plant to go up in the Toronto suburb of Islington will produce the Toronto Sun, the London Free Press, and 24 hours on three press lines, each with 12 towers, 16 reelstands and three jaw folders, as well as a folder for producing directories.
Co-owned by Quebecor Media and Quebecor World, the facility's commercial work will include directories for Yellow Book, which signed a long-term, $900 million contract with Quebecor World to print all its directories.
In the Montr?al suburb of Mirabel, construction proceeds on a plant that will print Le Journal de Montr?al, Quebec's largest-circulation daily (and the largest French-language daily in the Americas) and other newspaper and commercial work.
Groundbreaking on the 200,000-square-foot began last year, and the plant is to be fully operating by next April.
Increasing color capacity is a prime aim of the project. The Journal now can print 48 of 128 pages in color on its four nine-unit presses. The three new Colorman lines can put color on all 128 pages.
Production Vice President Denis Tetrault expects MAN's automated Power Plate Loading system to cut plate-change time by 40% and looks for reduced makeready waste as a result of Colorman's streamlined makeready process.
"Extra productivity results in extra capacity," Tetrault says, which can be made available for commercial jobs.
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