Article prepared by C. Clint Bolte, C. Clint Bolte & Associates, Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. For additional information please call 717-263-5768, fax 717-263-8945, or e-mail to clint@clintbolte.com.

PIA/GATF Offset & Beyond 2007:
Press Operations of the Future

The Offset and Beyond 2007 Conference, April 30-May 2 in Toronto, was the first ever combined web and sheetfed enclave. It brought together the Web Offset Association and its 54 years of WOA Conference history, along with sheetfed content from PIA/GATF. The expanded event drew 675 attendees who heard extraordinary speakers, attended dozens of breakout and special-interest sessions, and enjoyed the informal networking that these gatherings have become known for.

Featured keynote speaker was Brian Mulroney, Canada's former Prime Minister and current Quebecor Board member. The Right Honorable Mulroney recalled the meetings with President Ronald Reagan that culminated with their signing the first free trade agreement between their countries in 1989. This was expanded in October 1992 to include Mexico creating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Immensely unpopular among labor circles initially, NAFTA reported $700 billion dollars of joint trade among these three countries last year. Warning of the "sucking sound" of American jobs leaving for Mexico, opponents instead witnessed more than 20 million jobs being created in the United States over the ensuing years. Mexico recently surpassed Japan to become the USA's third largest trade partner even though their economy is less than half the size of Japan's.

Mr. Mulroney opined that government has two great international challenges in security and trade including the Internet. He said the EU has a common passport allowing free movement of its citizens among the 25 member countries. This allows them to concentrate on external security issues. The more restrictive passports now being required between Canada and the United States "is going in the wrong direction," he stated. These are internal borders to NAFTA. The security attention should be on the external borders.

He offered the vision of completing the trade trilogy of the Americas to envelop all of North, Central and South America. This trade zone of the Americas would include 34 countries and 800 million people. This will require transforming political leadership rather than transactional leadership. "Leaders need to look to the next generation rather than the next election," concluded Mulroney.

Luc Desjardins, President and CEO of Transcontinental, in another keynote presentation offered his view of how the printing industry is changing. As the sixth largest printer in North America, Transcontinental expects most of its future growth to come outside of Canada as its market share in daily newspapers, magazines and direct mail has reached near saturation on its home turf. By offering deeper logistical support to their American clients into the USPS delivery network, they expect their clients to experience only a 4% postal rate hike instead of the broader 9% expected by many.

They feel a real opportunity exists for Transcontinental to become the outsourcing print production partner for American Daily newspapers. The newspaper publishers would continue to concentrate on publishing including advertising sales and management. A model for this strategy is their recently completed fifteen year contract with Hearst to invest in a new printing plant with state of the art press and inserting technologies to produce the San Francisco Chronicle. The contract is worth a billion dollars of revenue to Transcontinental not including paper when the new plant is built in 2009.

Such business arrangements typically have a long negotiation cycle of up to 18 months as in the case of the Chronicle. Hence, Transcontinental has set up a separate division to sell, manage and implement this production outsourcing business model. Desjardins confirmed that they have no desire to get involved in any type of facility management arrangement for daily newspaper production. They prefer to bring their own management team and skilled operators into the new facility while avoiding legacy equipment.

The case study of digital book printer, Lightening Source, was another keynote address presented by its CEO, J. Kirby Best. Owned by Ingram's headquartered in Nashville, Lightening Source's driving impetus is out-of-print books. "Once a book has gone through its long selling cycle, people will continue to buy it as evidenced by triple digit growth out of old titles," remarked Best. Founded in 1997 the firm now prints 1.2 million books each month with an average run length per order of 1.8 books for its 4,500 publishing partners. Accelerated growth has resulted in 17 new digital presses being added in the last six months alone.

Originally targeted for overnight turn around from receipt of the web order through the entire manufacturing cycle, finished book delivery is now under 12 hours at a typical printing cost of $3.50 for a 200-page paperback. All financial elements of the transaction from buyer's payment of the book to Lightening Source's submission of royalties to the publisher are done electronically.

A second United States printing plant comprising 130,000 square feet will be starting up in Allentown, Pennsylvania later in 2007. Other new plants are slatted for Germany, Australia and Brazil in the near future.

Bob Danzig, Former CEO of Hearst Newspapers offered a keynote address on his views of "Transformational leadership." Individuals wanting to be leaders share these self-taught attributes; (1) mindset to seek the possible, (2) never let the negative disrupt vision for what is possible, (3) look within themselves for motivation, (4) bring their passion to what they do, (5) live a life of abundant curiosity, (6) always open to new ideas, (7) listen, understand, & encourage, (8) always do more than is required, and (9) be forward thinking.

Tom Davidson of The Tribune Company spoke on the "Digital Transformations Effecting Newspapers." The most trafficked news source is now Google. The former economics of mass media relied upon scarcity. For example in the early days of the Internet low bandwidth created this scarcity. Broadband capability destroyed this scarcity concept.

Al-Jezera, the Iraqi state run newspaper, cut out Comcast and others as an electronic outlet source and is now available on Youtube. Recently The Tribune serviced five million viewers via video stream, who were seeking the latest information on the early May Virginia Tech tragedy. While online revenues are growing at 20-30% a year for newspapers with profits even higher, the overall impact of the Internet is that "the equity values of most newspapers have fallen 40-60% in the last 30 months," remarked Davidson. Print will not disappear and alternative media competition will intensify. "Print and related services must prove they add value," concluded Davidson.

Participating on a panel discussing the new business model for print, George Wolden, Manufacturing Vice President of Hawthorne California's Lithographix (lithographix.com) described his firm's transition to the large format billboard printing via KBA's new 81" press. Among the surprises, which they learned quickly, was that a high resolution billboard wastes money since many are 150 feet or more from the road. A 25-line screen provides very adequate resolution. Prepress expertise is essential as everything in "outdoor graphics" must be scaled back for proofing prior to actual print production. A single plate could easily contain a gigabyte of image data. Manufacturing material handling has unique characteristics as well. For example, product cannot be stacked very high. Cutting mistakes can really be costly on a 30 press sheet run. Another interesting fact shared was that the employees used by the posting companies that actually mount these "building wraps" all have mountain climbing experience.

Paul Kuchta, Heidelberg Bindery Specialist, gave the Industrial Engineer's perspective of the make ready savings for the latest high tech finishing equipment. The JDF/JMF enabled presets offer automated and semi-automated advances resulting in these make ready savings;

Folder:	9 steps account for 100% of make ready time. The top 3 steps account for 72% of make ready. New equipment realizes a full 40% savings in make ready.
Stitcher:	7 steps account for 100% of make ready time. The top 3 steps account for 79% of make ready. New equipment realizes a full 50% savings in make ready on a first time job. Repeat jobs can book 90% make ready savings!
Cutter:	6 steps account for 100% of make ready time. The top 3 steps account for 88% of make ready. New equipment realizes a full 55% savings in make ready. The CompuCut™ software installed in electronic prepress can show the Bindery Supervisor the proposed cutting plan as soon as plate imposition is concluded.

Jack Hobby, Marketing Manager for B&L Machine and Design (blmachinedesign.com) out of Plymouth, Massachusetts, led a panel discussion on the refurbishment of legacy web presses and particularly the 2 X 4 press configuration. "Eight hundred presses are running in North America with about 30-40 new presses being delivered yearly," commented Hobby.

Research & Auditing Manager for Publishers Printing Company of Shepardsville, Kentucky, Joe Sohm, described how their first web press purchased in 1968 is still running today having been rebuilt more than once. They have bought 12 other webs new and another 11 used requiring partial or complete rebuilds. They do most all work in house with cylinder rebuild being outsourced.

The case for remanufacturing was well made by John Bell, CEO of Fulton, Missouri's Ovid Bell Press. They contracted with B&L to remanufacture a 4 unit M-1000 and retrofit it with all available automation upgrades. This 2 X 4 press would have a top speed of 1,000 fpm and be used for heavy coverage, tight register publication printing with an average run length of only 15,000. In another 12-18 months a second 4 unit B&L remanufactured "smart press" will be brought in parallel to the first in order to deliver two webs of 32 process color pages.

After only a few weeks of operation, Ovid Bell Press is realizing 34 minute per press form cycles on the "smart press" versus the 68 minutes for the same form on the older generation Hantschos which have no automation. The improvement to 1,200 make ready cutoffs and 3% run waste is only part of the cost savings leading to double the throughput and twice the capacity at only 60% of the investment of a new press. "High (investment) cost and high speed have no role in short run printing," concluded John Bell.

Hobby described other case studies of remanufacturing M-1000 and M-300 legacy war horses quite successfully with investment paybacks of only a couple of years. The same economics model is not as successful for half webs. Ray Prince, NAPL Vice President and Senior Consultant, added that the remanufacturing of sheetfed presses has not turned out to be as attractive as the 2 by 4 web application. This is because the new automated sheetfed presses are replacing at least 3 older model presses. Therefore the best ROI is solidly with the purchase of new rather than a rebuilt sheetfed press.

LEAN manufacturing is gaining acceptance with increasing successful case studies being reported. A key LEAN practice is 5S, which means sort, straighten (set in order), shine, standardize, and sustain. Chris Illa, Japs-Olson's Operations Manager, detailed his firm's experience targeted at reducing the setup time on their Drent web press. This was their first introduction to Kaizen and 5S. Therefore, their own "learning" process was quite methodical since sustaining the improved results was a key objective. Illa showed a number of before and after photos illustrating how personal tool boxes were replaced with an easily accessible "hanging tool board" as well as a nifty, well organized "Drent wash-up cart."

Illa is delighted with his firm's initial two-year experience with Kaizen and 5S. He offered a series of do's and don'ts leading to a successful Kaizen event. While it is important to help the project team to scope the event by keeping the focus narrow and deep, "don't dictate improvement ideas but let the team discover the improvements and work with them to focus their resources," summated Illa.

Ken Rizzo, PIA/GATF's Director of Consulting Services and a black belt in Kaizen implementation, provided a thorough "how to" of LEAN, Kaizen, and optimizing processes. "Begin with a value stream mapping which lists all actions and activities from planning through production processes," stated Rizzo. In creating a current state process map of all individual tasks, activities and times a video camera recording is often helpful. He applied the 5S principles to typical preventive maintenance functions on sheetfed presses to illustrate how these activities can be optimized.

With fuel costs escalating and expected to continue climbing, energy management for printers quickly moves to a front burner priority. Gary Jones, PIA/GATF's Director of Environmental Health & Safety Affairs, offered sage advice in realizing a quick 5-15% cost savings with little or no capital expenditure. "Conduct an assessment focusing on cost not usage," suggested Jones, "and you'll find the big three quick fix opportunities to be compressed air, the heating ventilation air conditioning system and the lighting systems."

While the cancellation of the sheetfed conference after a run of a decade and a half was met with disappointment in many circles, many attendees and sponsor suppliers heralded the combining of the web and sheetfed conclaves as simple genius on the part of PIA/GATF. Likewise the initial concern for this first gathering being held so far away in Toronto was quickly put asunder as attendees got to meet the always strong cadre of exceptional Canadian printers as well as experience the extraordinary hospitality of our northern neighbor.

Article prepared by C. Clint Bolte, C. Clint Bolte & Associates, Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. For additional information please call 717-263-5768, fax 717-263-8945, or e-mail to clint@clintbolte.com.