Dow Jones begins roll-out of Harland Simon Production Management System

Dow Jones & Company, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, has begun rolling out a new production management information system to its 17 printing sites across the United States. The system, known as PRIMA.net, has been supplied by UK-based newspaper system specialists Harland Simon and has already been installed and accepted at the first two pilot sites.

The Journal's production management team, based at South Brunswick, New Jersey, which is about 50 miles south of New York City, initiated the project in order to provide automated tools to capture and trend daily operating information about the performance of each of its 19 presslines.

Conversations between the two companies first began at NEXPO 1999 in Las Vegas, where the Dow Jones team were very impressed by Harland Simon's computer systems, in particular. The following year saw Dow Jones issue a functional requirements document to a handful of vendors and a letter of intent was finally given to Harland Simon at NEXPO 2000 in San Francisco.

Although many of the PRIMA.net modules came directly from Harland Simon's existing systems, a number of new modules were also developed to meet Dow Jones's specific requirements. This additional functionality is appropriate for almost any newspaper production environment. In December 2000 an in-depth system test was conducted at Harland-Simon's development facility in Milton Keynes, England. The tests were very successful and installation at the first site began in January.

The PRIMA.net system will collect, store and organize data for newsprint usage, production copy counting and press staff, materials and equipment performance. It will interface to the existing ABB press control systems and present discrete period and trend information as real time displays and historic off-line reports.

The system will publish operating information from all sites on a Dow Jones intranet, enabling local, regional and national management to receive accurate data immediately. PRIMA.net runs under standard Microsoft software and uses industry standard hardware, including PCs, PLCs, data acquisition units and touch screens.

Wall Street Journal Vice President Production, Michael Sheehan, said, "After evaluating a number of proposed solutions, including one from our press control systems supplier, we concluded that Harland Simon's solution would best serve our needs. They've turned out an excellent system in a very short time. We are delighted not only with the product but with their whole approach to this project, which has been very professional throughout".

As a result of the project, Harland Simon has formed a close working relationship with Siemens Westinghouse Technical Services, who will be carrying out the installation of the system and some of the training in the United States. So far this has proven to be very successful and will strengthen Harland Simon's growing reputation in the U.S.

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