Harland Simon is being transformed June 2002

Harland Simon plc is currently going through a transformation. The company now employs over 120 people from offices in Milton Keynes as well as in Chicago, USA, while more than 200 newspaper presses world-wide, producing over 40 million newspapers each day, rely on Harland Simon’s ISO 9001 certified technology. Its PRIMA MS press management system is recognised as being the world leader and the company is set to develop into a global organisation.

“This is not a face-lift,” says Harland Simon's Managing Director. “We are re-engineering the business in order to provide tools and services designed to help our customers better meet the challenges that are faced by today’s rapidly changing newspaper market.”

Changes that have already taken place include a strengthening of the senior management team; a development focus on software and systems bringing better control to the total newspaper production process, from pre-press to the mailroom. The company has also entered into successful partnerships that have introduced the company’s software to a wider market place.

Harland Simon's present Managing Director, who was appointed in July 2001 having successfully run the company’s software development division since 1991, has appointed Doug Mace as Deputy Managing Director. Mace worked with Harland Simon from 1995 - 99 before leaving the company to study for an MBA. His role is to bring together the hardware and software engineering and operations sides of the business and to more effectively use the company’s resources to bring innovative solutions to market.

Tony White has taken over as Corporate Communications Director while also maintaining his role looking after the company’s major UK and international customers.
“During the past twelve months we have also significantly increased our presence in North America by the addition of a number of local sales and support staff,” adds the MD.

NEW PRODUCTS:
The company has also released new products, both software that helps make best use of a press’ colour capabilities, as well as a modern new press control console.

Firstly Esprit, a software solution that automatically generates impositions by calculating the best way to layout a newspaper on a press. Harland Simon configures the software with the press’ capabilities that are then combined with the user’s preferred production methods. With this in place, and once a requirement is given to Esprit, it will generate the best way to configure the press to produce the required newspaper product.

Esprit will also take into account any parts of the press that are unusable at that time and even the way in which the press is currently webbed-up. Esprit is being successfully used to plan New York Times’ production across its 19 print sites, a job that previously took several hours and with Esprit now takes only a few minutes.

Another software solution recently released by the company is ColorWare, a dynamic software tool that aids page planners in the placement of colour pages within their newspapers. It does this by continually advising where colour pages can be placed as the newspaper layout develops. By using ColorWare page planners can be sure that they are using the colour printing facilities to their full potential by showing all available colour, while not generating products that could cause problems when on the presses.

“The ColorWare solution helps to maximise advertising revenues by showing colour availability in real-time. It is not like other page planning systems which use libraries of colour availability – and you are restricted to whatever has been pre-configured,” says Harland Simon's MD, adding “ColorWare is the vital link between the pre-press, planning and production environments.”

PRIMA 6000; A new hardware product being launched at Nexpo 2002 in Orlando, Florida, is the company’s new press control console, the PRIMA 6000. As well as providing a totally new ergonomic design, the PRIMA 6000 uses the latest PC and touch-screen technology together with Harland Simon’s innovative software capabilities. The console is extremely easy to use and helps operators maintain print quality, reduce wastage and improve production efficiency. In tests, all these aims have been met.

ABOUT HARLAND SIMON
Harland Simon’s solutions and expertise encompass drives and controls and production management systems. Over many years, it has developed particular expertise in modernising presses with the addition of centralised production and quality control systems, management information systems as well as systems integration.

Almost all of the UK’s national titles use Harland Simon’s technology as do more than 20 UK commercial and regional newspaper print sites.

In North America newspapers including The New York Times; Dow Jones and Company Inc. (now with 17 sites using Harland Simon’s technology); The Chicago Sun-Times; and The Toronto Star, as well as newspapers in Europe also use Harland Simon’s systems.

CONTACTS:
Sales Director.
Tel: +44 (0)1908 27 6700   e-mail: sales@harlandsimon.com

NORTH AMERICA: Senior Vice President
Tel: + 1 630 572 7650  e-mail: john.staiano@harlandsimon.com

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