Kickstart Case Study

Challenge: To improve delivery of the Evening Mail and other newspaper titles printed by Cumbrian News Print through increased press reliability and consistency of print quality.

Solution: The Furness Print Centre, in Barrow, embarked upon a Vision in Print Kickstart programme to analyse the problems and find sustainable solutions.

With the emphasis in today's UK newspaper market moving increasingly to higher quality colour, Cumbrian News Print has recently made substantial investments to ensure the continuation of exceptional customer service to readers, advertisers and contract print customers.

The company operates two state-of-the-art printing presses in Carlisle and Barrow, printing the Cumbrian News Group's own titles, as well as national specialist titles, magazines and supplements. To cope with its heavy workload, it has recently built a new printing facility in Barrow, employing 35 staff and equipped with a new Solna D400 press. Despite these investments, the on-time delivery of the regional Evening Mail was not hitting the 'van-away' time.

"We have a specific target time for our delivery vans to leave the plant," states James Haney, Press Manager. "Missing the schedule by just 15 minutes can cause a substantial drop in our copy sales."

Homing in on the solution

With sales under scrutiny, Vision in Print (ViP) was called in to find the root cause of the problems. Dan Sherwen, ViP engineer explains, "When a newspaper press doesn't deliver to expectations - either through quality, reliability or consistency - the hunt for the problem can be complex. There are so many variables that you need to eliminate potential problems in a highly structured manner. We are trained to use tried-and-tested analysis techniques and to introduce Best Practice operational procedures. Our objective is to use these tools to pinpoint problem areas and to mentor a company's own staff in ways to improve."

Following the initial diagnostic day of the Kickstart programme, it was clear that the unreliability of the press, due to inconsistent set-up procedures, was the main cause of the late deliveries. With this identified, a two-man team carried out a further intensive 'hands-on' workshop, focusing on the specific problems of folder jams, web breaks and splice failures.

According to team member Kevin Hall, Shift Supervisor, "We were soon taught that the key to success was to involve the entire company in our thought processes and suggested remedies. Despite being just a two-man team, it is amazing what changes could be made with the involvement of our workmates."

Techniques

Under the guidance of ViP engineer, Dan Sherwen, the two-man team from the Furness Print Centre learnt and practiced new skills that enabled them to carefully analyse the performance problems of their press.

Following strict data analysis techniques, which tracked a job from reelstand to mailroom, they pinpointed key areas for focused improvement. Using facts, gathered in a disciplined manner, the team and the ViP engineer worked together to isolate problems and focus on deriving solutions.

"The programme was all about learning Best Practices," confirms Kevin. "Using a structured approach, we analysed the problems and documented possible solutions. We then let everybody contribute to the solutions, from their own perspective, so that each solution was practical and workable."

This structured approach not only produced dramatic results, but also made the team realise that the techniques used could be applied elsewhere in the business. "Our original problems are almost non-existent now," states Martin Hawkins, Engineer at the Furness Print Centre. "We have now shifted focus to master our waste levels."

"Throughout the programme, our ViP engineer was excellent. I would recommend Kickstart to any company," confirms Kevin. "Dan helped and guided us every step of the way, providing practical advice as well as teaching the important fundamentals that would help us make further improvements on our own. The team are now totally confident of implementing changes, as decisions are made based on thorough research and input from the rest of the company."

The development of Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) was an essential part of the experience and the solution for Cumbrian News. The Kickstart team developed individual SOPs that focused on folder settings and reel splices. In addition, an overall press set-up checklist was created to ensure that all press settings were correct and complete before any job went to print.

"Sticking to these SOPs has made all the difference. We use them as pre-flight checklists to make sure everything is right before the press rolls," states Martin. "For example, when we changed from a halfreel to full-width, we needed to clean the blankets on the part of the web that was not previously printing. This is so obvious but, because it was not part of a strict procedure, it was often forgotten."

In addition to the pre-flight checks, the team also developed a series of visual aids to act as a reminder of particular processes or set-up details.

The results

Kevin and Martin firmly believe that the Kickstart programme has been an unprecedented success.

"We now meet 'van-away-times' 86% of the time, and when we are late it is only by a few minutes," confirms Kevin.

This success is due mainly to a dramatic reduction in press downtime from 17.8 hours per week to 2.9 hours. "It's surprising how good you feel when you see success confirmed by hard data. All pre-flight information is loaded into a computer, so we can prove that the improvements have been a direct result of our Kickstart programme.

"The increased motivation within the team is also important. Vision in Print's expertise helped us find the solution to this specific problem, but also to energise our team to make further improvements. We have better job satisfaction, but also get home on time - we got our lives back once the press started to print more reliably."

A core aim of the Kickstart programme is to help printers realise the benefits of creating a culture of continuous improvement. A key measure of success is when a team implements a wider roll-out of improvements to other parts of the business. This underlines the fact that making improvements is everybody's responsibility and capability, not just the role of management.

"We are continuing to improve the current programme with the objective of 100% on time deliveries," confirms Kevin. "But waste reduction is now in our sights. With an increasing variety of work, job changeovers are critical. At the moment, we waste too much press time on makereadies, before we get quality printed copies.

"We are currently analysing the causes of waste. Having increased production from 250,000 copies per week to nearly one million, there is dramatic scope for improvement in this area. With new tools and skills at our fingertips, we don't necessarily need help from ViP to capitalise on the opportunity. The good thing is, we know that they are always there to help if we get stuck."