Mon 24-Jul-2000

Paper delays caused by press P-C subscribers to be credited with extra Sunday paper By John Lee Post-Crescent staff writer

If you noticed your Sunday edition of The Post-Crescent was a few hours late - judging from calls Sunday, several thousand of you did - you can blame it on some of the state-of-the-art technology in the paper's new production facility.

If you think your morning didn't start out well with a late paper, think about the pressroom employees, some of whom worked more than 20 hours straight to get the paper out, and the employees in distribution and circulation who worked into the afternoon.

While Editor Bill Harke praised employees and carriers who worked hard and late to get the papers out, he also said all subscribers will be credited with an extra Sunday paper - at a cost of more than $100,000 to the company.

Some problems were expected to come when the new $35 million plant started printing The Post-Crescent, the Oshkosh Northwestern and the Herald Times Reporter of Manitowoc, and steps are being taken to avoid any more serious delays, said Joe Ellingham, chief technology officer at the printing facility in Appleton.

If that means adjusting some equipment, having additional training for employees or having technicians from the printing press manufacturer here to make sure things run smoothly, it will be done, Ellingham said.

What basically happened Saturday, Ellingham said, is that the new MAN Roland presses "froze up," just as a computer freezes up and had to be shut down and restarted.

"This is basically a big computer that happens to print newspapers," he said.

"Essentially it freezes up. We're not sure why. It happens very infrequently, and I don't remember it ever happening where we couldn't quite figure out what to do."

The shutdown pushed pre-runs from the afternoon to the evening, and employees had to call the press manufacturer in Germany before they could get the press running again.

This shutdown was compounded in that there is a waiting period before re-starting, and after the re-start there were a couple of web breaks.

Also, printers were running one Post-Crescent section on two presses as part of the afternoon pre-run for Sunday's papers, and when that was delayed a couple hours after the freeze-up, that run was divided and eventually run separately, Ellingham said.

Press room employees reported to work at 1 p.m. Saturday, and press runs for early sections were supposed to start at 2 p.m.

Usually, those are done by late evening, when the Manitowoc, Oshkosh and Appleton papers are then printed, being completed and ready for delivery early Sunday.

Manitowoc's press run was completed on time, but the last Post-Crescent came off the press about 8:30 a.m. Sunday, with Oshkosh following 45 minutes later.

Ironically, technicians from MAN Roland's Chicago office were at the facility earlier Saturday to try to correct a problem when one of the presses froze up Friday night, Ellingham said. That breakdown made the Oshkosh paper late for Saturday morning.

The new technology requires "quite a learning curve," Ellingham said, and the problems are more evident now that all three papers are being printed at the new site.

"We haven't completely gotten to the top of our learning curve. If we need more training it will be done," he said.

The facility started printing the Manitowoc paper April 12, and Oshkosh production was moved to the site May 8.

When The Post-Crescent started printing at the new facility July 11, the production more than doubled.

On Saturdays, when there are two pre-runs for Appleton and one for Oshkosh, plus printing of the three papers, press runs are long. The facility prints 20,000 editions of the Manitowoc paper and 30,000 for Oshkosh, plus 80,000 for The Post-Crescent.

"We've now really put our press into its final and intended use with the P-C being there. You are running long press runs now," Ellingham said.

He said MAN Roland technicians will be coming back for a full technology check, and he plans to keep them on-site during press runs for however long it takes, especially Saturday or Sunday nights.

"If they stand here and do nothing for a couple weeks (and equipment works well) that's fine with me," he said.

Harke said he hoped subscribers didn't blame the carriers for delays, especially since many of them ran early morning routes to deliver pre-runs and inserts, then ran their routes again when the paper was out.

"It's definitely not the carriers' fault," he said. "The carriers, the pressmen, the drivers and the mail room employees have been working their tails off to get this done.

"Issues with the press caught us off guard. The amount of product, especially for Saturdays and Sundays, mean little problems seems to mount."

He said the company apologizes to customers for the inconvenience, and said steps are being taken to correct the problems.

"We're committed to make this work and make it work right. This is not acceptable to our customers and it is not acceptable to us," he said.

http://www.wisinfo.com/postcrescent/news/072400-2.html

-- Doris (reaper1@mindspring.com), July 25, 2000