European print chiefs view Mediaprint's Vienna project

May 17, 2018 at 11:17 pm by Staff


A project to equip Austrian giant Mediaprint for the future of newspaper printing has come under peer scrutiny at an open day in Vienna.

The project has seen the installation of the latest QIPC quality control systems, an extensive mechanical retrofit by press maker Koenig & Bauer and a complete overhaul by EAE of the control electronics and software architecture.

In an Austrian market in which newspapers are more than holding their own, the company prints its own national dailies Kronen-Zeitung and Kurier - totalling just under 950,000 copies a night - as well as daily Der Standard under contract and part editions of free newspapers Heute and Niederösterreichischen Nachrichten, TV guides, weeklies and other work.

The comprehensive refit, which has been underway for two years, will update the 13 KBA Commander presses Mediaprint operates in Vienna and two other centres, which were installed between 2001-2002. Some 39 press towers have already been fitted with QI Press Controls' IDS-3D closed loop density control, existing ABB controls and planning system are being replaced with EAE control components and the VIP Dispo/Mail/Statistic and Print Image software packages.

The plant is the first user of EAE's Desk 7 control desk, and with three of the eight presses at Vienna-Inzersdorf fully upgraded, the customer was ready to talk about initial experiences. More than 30 newspaper printers from eight countries - among them Axel Springer, Funke, Newsprinters and CPP - visited the plant to view what is the largest retrofit project that EAE has undertaken to date.

EAE senior sales vice president Bernhard Schmiedeberg spoke of the simplification of control architecture which now means each press tower needs only one PLC instead of 11, with EAE modules now replacing software that was partly developed inhouse.

Taking each of the eight presses out of commission for ten weeks has enabled the EAE project - which started in February last year - to move quickly ahead, and for engineers to be trained on the project, as a result of which it should be possible to fully convert the last two lines in Salzburg within two weeks.

The Mediaprint retrofit is an important showcase for all involved, with Koenig & Bauer, QIPC and EAE working closely together, and provides an opportunity to shows Desk 7 operating under production conditions. It also confirms the potential for savings which, in the case of Mediaprint, are expected to run into the tens of million Euros.

QIPC-EAE chairman Menno Jansen says he sees the current version of the new control desk as just a first step. The "control desk of the future" with its central 4K screen will display a dashboard that provides at-a-glance information about press status through colour signals and smart graphics.

These functions will be part of the retrofit project currently underway at De Persgroep in Amsterdam, where the Dutch customer will cut the number of control desks per press from three to two - as will Mediaprint - but aims to control two press lines from a single Desk 7.

Pictured: Participants see how Mediaprint staff are using the new controls


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