How Newspaper Product Properties Influence Mailroom Disturbances

In the Nordic newspaper industry, the occurrence of inserts is gradually increasing. This means new production conditions in the printing plants, especially in the mailroom. Interviews with production staff have indicated that, inserting (including winding and unwinding) and stacker operations are considered as the main problem areas in the mailroom. Earlier studies show that the mailroom disturbances also have large impact on unplanned press stops. One of the studies showed that 30-40% of the unplanned press stops originated from the mailroom. Most Swedish newspaper printing plants have on-line production with respect to printing and mailroom operations. In some companies, the idea of using buffer systems has been considered in order to separate the printing and mailroom operations. In this paper we focus on the relationship between unplanned stops in the mailroom and the number of pages in combination with the number of inserts. Results in the area of down time and error frequency are presented and analysed. The study is based on real production data from three newspaper production plants.