The Sacramento Bee, with daily circulation of 294,300 and Sunday circulation of 348,500 and part of The McClatchy Company, has selected Harland Simon for the first phase of a rolling program to completely replace their existing press control systems. The first phase includes the replacement of the APCS equipped Colorliner press this year and it is anticipated that replacement of the PCS equipped Metroliners will follow in 2004. A number of other enhancements including main drive replacements and reelstand upgrades are envisaged as further stages of the program.

The project on the Colorliner press includes the elimination of the obsolete Allen Bradley systems, DEC computers and will provide two new PRIMA 5000 multi-function control consoles together with a complete PRIMA management system for product planning, presetting, real time monitoring and comprehensive reporting.

The RIPSet presetting interface will accept interface will accept TIFF Grp 4 files from the Agfa Intellinet system and generate ink presetting data for not only the Colorliner press but also the Metroliner presses even though these will still be equipped with the existing PCS controls for the time being.

The PRIMA management system will also include the uniquely successful Esprit auto-impositioning module together with it’s partner product ColorWare for page booking, automatically providing color availability options for maximum press utilisation, a significant benefit to The Bee who, many days a week, can sell every page of color that could be produced. To maximise the efficiency of the Harland Simon ColorWare system it will be dynamically linked upstream to the Computerease Adcontrol Ad Layout system bridging the gap between the Production and Product Planning functions.

The Bee carried out an extensive investigation into all the available controls solutions and a team visited a number of sites to view existing installations resulting in the selection of the Harland Simon solution. Bruce Meissner, Production Director at The Bee commented " We felt that, having seen all the viable options in operation, the Harland Simon system provided the simplest, most cost effective and user friendly interfaces for efficient operation. Combining this with the more advanced integration features available from the Harland Simon would provide us with a solution that goes further than a simple like for like upgrade enabling us to take advantage of the latest systems developments."

The project completes the range of systems available from Harland Simon for PCS equipped Metro/Metroliners, MPCS equipped Headliners and now APCS equipped Colorliner presses and as such marks another significant step in the growth of Harland Simon in the North American market. The combination of innovative solutions with a solid base in industry standard hardware and software systems provides an attractive package to the progressive users in the industry.