Offset Printing

Fit for the Future: The Guardian Print Centre upgrades its electronic systems

Thursday 23. October 2014 - New PECOM hardware for COLORMAN presslines in London and Manchester

In order to keep their presses up-to-date, the Guardian Print Centres were undergoing an electronic retrofit in August. This ensures maximum uptime and spare parts availability while opening new functions in the control desk and the PressManager.
The COLORMAN press lines were installed in 2005. Their dimensions are impressive: 20 towers and 4 folders are printing in London, 10 towers and 2 folders in the Manchester Print Centre. They print the six weekday editions of The Guardian and its Sunday sister, The Observer, highly recognised national newspapers in the UK, as well as commercial products and inserts. Now their press consoles (8 in London and 4 in Manchester) were retrofitted with packages for the PECOM Control Desk System, PECOM PressManager (PPM) Server, including a Hot-Stand-By-Server that can instantly take over from the PPM in case of a breakdown. Therefore, highest-level production security is guaranteed.
Latest technologies preventing failures and opening new perspectives
Brett Lawrence, Director of Production Newspapers of the Guardian´s National Newspaper Operations, points out: “Electronic devices wear out over the years and require updating, especially if they include spinning parts such as fans and hard drives. The controllers in our press consoles are in operation for 24h/365d a year. We were worrying that a failure could occur, and in order to ensure a maximum on-press availability we decided to carry out this upgrade.” The new console controllers do not include any spinning parts that can wear out over the years. This feature makes them more reliable against mechanical failures and also prevents any dust particles from intruding through cooling fans.
Fast course into the future
The upgrades were performed by engineers from manroland web systems in Germany and an electrical technician from the UK subsidiary, on time, including staff training on the new functions.
In the second half of October also the Automation Diagnostic Servers (ADS) will be replaced. The retrofit of the Control Desk System in conjunction with the PPM System retrofit and the Ethernet upgrade on the Press Management level sets the course for further extensions and additional functionality in the future.