April results -- press issues to consider

Press issues related to late starts and web breaks contributed to a drop in April's score -- 91.72 vs. 92.23 for March.

Press starts for the month scored 88.18 (a significant drop from the March score of 92.90). Some of the later starts were due to commercial print work (specifically the Portland Phoenix and Weekly Sentinel) that ran long. Other late starts were due to Herald pages getting plated later than normal. We'll have to dig into why.

Late starts and longer press runs because of web breaks or other mechanical issues had a direct impact on run-time and finish scores in Post-Press, two categories that also went down in April.

Post-Press run time score was 98.39 in March but dropped to 92.97 in April. Post-Press finish score dropped from 100 in March to 93.61.

Longer runs were due to a variety of mechanical issues, such as folder jams. But one issue that stands out from the run data is a higher than usual frequency of web breaks particularly on Tower 4 during April. A web break means down time, and the down time can get particularly lengthy if a web break on Tower 4 also led to web breaks on other towers, which was sometimes the case. It's something that Plate/Press Manager Alan Laskey and his crew will have to review and resolve.

If the press is down, then it isn't feeding product to the inserter, which makes for longer mailroom runs.

On the plus side, April saw improvements in scores for plate calibration, graybar, color registration, photo quality, and ad quality.

To see the complete scorecard, please click on the April results to the right.

Paul Briand

March grade an A-

The overall quality grade for March was 91.53, about three quarters of a point behind February’s grade. This would amount to about an A- on the report card.

There were a few down turns from the previous month – photo quality, run time and finish time.

No one item was responsible for the change in photos – fuzzy, over-enlarged, poor toning … it as all over the map, but Don continues to work on the editorial side to address the quality issues. As for post-press run times and finish times, the two bad nights were due to press issues having an effect on post-press. If the press isn’t running, it can’t feed product to the mailroom. On the night of March 13 it was an array of web breaks and on March 23 it was a problem with a sensor in the folder.

There were improved scores in several areas – plate calibration, registration, press defects, ad quality and insertion accuracy. Plate calibration scores improved a lot over March, this despite an overhaul of Line 1 late in the month that messed up calibrations for a couple of days. There was also a significant improvement in graybar scores, which means that overall the color inking improved as it was evenly set to the proper measurements.

The full scoreboard for March is available on the rail to the right.

Color management workshop

Photographer Don Clark and I will be part of a panel discussion on color management and how the process is everyone's concern at a newspaper, as we have shown here at SMG.

The workshop is being sponsored by the New England Newspaper Operations Association, which is part of NENA (New England Newspapers Association). It is being held on Wednesday, May 14, at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Worcester, MA, from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

This workshop cuts across all departments because all departments have a stake in good color quality. We hope to attract photographers, anyone who tones images (advertising artists and paginators, for example), plateroom workers and press personnel.

The panel includes people with extensive knowledge in color management and process control. Besides me and Don, panelists include the technical service manager from Flint Ink, Dan Goodenow, who had a role in our color calibration, and Ben Allen, the systems manager at the Concord, N.H., Monitor, who has a deep background in color quality.

Click here for more information about the workshop.

Paul Briand

Change made to scorecard

After discussion, we have changed the quality scorecard effective March 1 to reflect changes in the Post-Press finish times for Monday-Saturday and Sunday. Each has been moved up a half hour, so that the deadline to finish Monday through Saturday is now 2:30 a.m. and the deadline for Sunday is 3:00.

A score of 100 will be awarded to those runs that finish on or before 2:30 and 3:00 respectively, then points deducted for the minutes that pass beyond deadlines.

This was done as a reflection of two considerations: 1) The growth of contracted products we are now delivering out of our Lighthouse distribution business requires an earlier need for the Herald and 2) our improved throughput on the insert machine that has consistently shown our ability to finish on or before 2:30 for the daily and on or before 3:00 for the Sunday.

Paul

February score shows full point improvement

February's overall score improved by more than a point over January, with better showings almost across the board.

The month finished with an overall score of 92.23 compared to 91.13 in January.

Better calibrated plates, press times closer to 12:30, tighter registration, fewer defects, and a perfect score in Post-Press finish times all helped the cause. There was also improvement scored in photo quality and inserter accuracy.

In terms of trends, ad quality dropped vs. January by almost 5 points, largely because of recurring problems with ads that rastorized or had issues with separating black. Interestingly, many of these ads were our own -- house ads to promote Restaurant Week, for example, which came from a contractor hired by Maribeth.

I talked to Maribeth about the issues the quality team was seeing, and Maribeth talked to Ken Soucy in Creative Services who re-worked some of the ads in an effort to get them to reproduce better. The hope is that as a result of the discussion among Ken, Maribeth and her contractor we'll see an improvement in the quality of house ads and an improvement in March in the Ad Quality score.

Our quality efforts are being recognized in the region. Don and I will participate in a May workshop on color management and process control sponsored by the New England Newspaper Association. More to come on that.

To see the complete February results, check out the link to the right or click here.

Paul

Welcome

My hope is that this blog becomes a one-stop shop for those of you who seek information and/or data from our daily and nightly operations. If you want to know how last night's runs went, it's in the production data to the right. Interested in daily plate calibrations results? It's over there. If you want to know how the quality is, our scorecard information is there too.

In addition, I've provided some links to web sites that contain technical information related to newspaper printing operations. And there's a slide show at the bottom of the building project.

I hope it's useful; comments are welcome. Enjoy.

Paul Briand
Director of Operations
Seacoast Media Group

January Scorecard results

Here are the scorecard results for January 2008.

Among the highlights:

Much improved overall scores for black density and graybars, owing to some very good press work;
A drop in score in plate calibrations, something Sharon is working on to even out;
Press start score improved, as did mailroom finish time score;
Registration, press defects, photo, ad and run time scores stayed about the same.

Another highlight is how I believe the scorecard work is translating on the monthly credit analysis. Among the three areas where we’ve instilled some process analysis – mailroom, graphics and press/camera – we only had one credit in the January report and that was for $57.18 for an ad that was out of registration.

Very good work by everyone concerned.

December scorecard results

Here are the scorecard results for December 2007.

We’ve been at this now since mid-September, and I want to give credit to the scorers – Alan Laskey, Therese SanSoucie, Alana Sullivan and Don Clark – who’ve made the commitment to look at each day’s paper with a critical eye and meet with me each day at 11 a.m. to review and score the paper. Schedules don’t always allow 100 percent attendance but we’ve always had enough information and commentary to score an edition, put the results on-line on our Google Doc, and post the results on the bulletin board in the pressroom.

December was a particularly good month in Post-Press in terms of run times (97.8), finish times (98.9) and overall insertion accuracy (99.6) – congratulations to Martha and her crew.

The daily meetings help us identify quality defects and concerns before they bloom into full-blown problems. Blanket smashes, for example, can affect an image on the page and smashes are identified, scored as a defect, but then corrected by Alan and the press crew. We’ve seen cases where the black type for an ad comes in as process color black; there’s no need for this since the only color you need for black type is black. In these cases Therese has tried to work with an ad rep and his/her client to send black type as black.

Don has been great working with folks in the Editorial department on photo toning when images are flat or have too much of one color or another. He’s also trying to help out on cut-outs on C1 that can look ragged on some days. We’ve seen improvements as we’ve been going through this quality scoring process.