Español Français Deutsch Slimming down is the name of the game during today's challenging economic times, and many newspaper printing operations are turning out high-quality products with fewer personnel and even lower costs than ever before.

The guiding principles of the "Lean Production"; concept serve as the inspiration for the just published WAN-IFRA Magazine EXTRA, as well as the roadmap for those advanced printing plants featured in the special edition.

The Lean Production EXTRA, published by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA), is the first of three targeted special editions coming out this year and is available in print and ePaper).

The special edition examines some of the most efficient printing plants in the world, as well as exploring the best conditions, technologies, procedures and processes for achieving the goal of lean production.

"The first thing that comes to mind when the subject of efficiency is raised is automation, which is more prevalent in printing plants as a result of technical progress,"; says Moritz Schwarz, who advises newspaper printing operations worldwide as a WAN-IFRA senior consultant.

But while automation leads to efficiency, and less personnel, Mr Schwarz and other industry production experts told EXTRA that true lean production means carefully considering every aspect of a printing operation for continuous improvement.

The EXTRA features a variety of different lean production solutions:

  The Rossel Printing Company in Belgium: Perhaps the ideal condition for considering lean production is the luxury of designing a building freshly from top to bottom. That is the case here where the goal of a "Just-In-Time"; process has been achieved.

  Independent News & Media in Newry, Northern Ireland: Instead of constructing a new building, INM chose to move into a warehouse for its printing operation and made the most of this unique older design with some of the most modern equipment in the industry.

  The Presse-Druck und Verlags GmbH in Augsburg, Germany: Investing in the most automated equipment on the market is always a good start, but this company proves how workflow planning, integration and management systems helps to hit the bottomline.

  The Chunichi Shimbun in Japan: Thanks to highly automated equipment and integrated control systems throughout, combined with a carefully planned building design, this printing centre in southern Japan accomplished one of its primary criterion: to work with minimum personnel.

The expanded ePaper version features two more case studies, from Russia and the United States, an interview with Mr Schwarz about how newspapers are investing in their production facilities, and a report about workflow integration.

In June, WAN-IFRA will publish an EXTRA edition focusing on Product Innovation, followed in November with a Cross-Media Systems review.

If you are interested in subscribing to WAN-IFRA Magazine, contact Iris von der Marwitz (Tel: +49-6151-7336; email: iris.vdmarwitz@wan-ifra.org ) or visit www.wan-ifra.org/subscribe.

WAN-IFRA, based in Paris, France, and Darmstadt, Germany, with subsidiaries in Singapore, India, Spain, France and Sweden, is the global organisation of the world's newspapers and news publishers. It represents more than 18,000 publications, 15,000 online sites and over 3,000 companies in more than 120 countries. The organisation was created by the merger of the World Association of Newspapers and IFRA, the research and service organisation for the news publishing industry.

Inquiries to: Larry Kilman, Director of Communications and Public Affairs, WAN-IFRA, 7 rue Geoffroy St Hilaire, 75005 Paris France. Tel: +33 1 47 42 85 00. Fax: +33 1 47 42 49 48. Mobile: +33 6 10 28 97 36. E-mail: larry.kilman@wan-ifra.org.