Abril is one of the biggest worldwide printing industry that is able to produce 350 millions of magazines per year. The graphic has one of the most complex and sophisticated business model of publishing sector: some publications with flexible publishing graphic profile are done in order to attend the largest number of companys from the printing segment and the new requirement of customized advertising.

Abril is undertaken to deliver about 25 simultaneous variations of the same title of “Veja” Magazine. Today, “Veja” has printing run around 1,2 millions of magazines per week, 70% of them are printed in Sao Paulo, 16% in Recife (PE) and 14% in Juiz de Fora (MG).

According to Mr. Cláudio Baronni, Abril Graphic manager, “Veja” has a printing variety that provides different and special cover, folders, all of them specified to different areas of the Country, including advertisement pages, the increase of supplements and gifts that will be delivered in determined location.

Totally, there are about 314 publications per month that are delivered to all Brazil cities and are produced in a short time interval to attend the commitments with advertising and distribution.

The great production volume requires the graphic to work in a hard level (around 95% – superior to the average of the printing sector) bringing several challenges of planning and control to keep the agreement with its customers. The constant pressure to reduce costs and improve quality and efficiency has taken the graphic to develop new and best processes to search for tools that allow the automation of these processes.  

Abril decided to implement new systems for production management because of current and future challenges. The company has evaluated many alternatives, available tools in the international market and the investment to renew its own solution that was developed internally.
“If it is true that our model made us competitive, it is sure that this model generates several administrative challenges in which would not have any appropriated software”, Mr. Baronni said.

As a final decision, they have choosing the products and services of METRICS, a Brazilian company that provides management system for printing industry process. The project implements a completed solution of management production that involves the product specification by magazines editors, costs formation, automatic generation of technical specifications and production order, manufacture planning, work execution control and delivery.

This project was developed in steps, in order not only to make the implementation feasible but also not to cause loss in the business.

Firstly, Metrics JobTrack was implemented in Abril. This system monitors production, it allows to supervise the machines work from the plant and to accompany each job status. The information are electronically captured through sensors and are available for all company sectors that will be able to see, in real time, the situation of each machine and process, along 45 thousand meters of the Sao Paulo plant. As a result, it was obtained important reductions referring to paper loss (the main resource used by the company) and also productivity profits.

The second system that was implemented in Abril was Metrics Planner. This tool provides  production planning and its aim is to optimize the allocation of activities on machines, making the plant highly efficient. It is also possible to manage the execution of each activity and guarantee the products delivery in the determined schedule. With the new management system, Abril has made more efficient and agile its model of competitive planning that Mr. Baronni qualifies as reversal engineering. “While most of companies start to create the production flow from the raw material and then follow to machines and so on, our efficient strategic has based on the production planning from the delivery logistics. In other words, all production flow is based on the logistics scheme, including the supply of hundreds of trucks that will move to many towns. “Delivering these high quality products to the right location in the determined schedule depends on the process efficiency”, Mr. Baronni said.

Through Metrics solution, Abril is able to translate these logistics parameters in schedules, flow charts and production order. A printing interface that make possible to the managers to “visualize” each one of the machines and resources involved in the process and each one of the resources that need to be allocated in the magazines production.
The decisions are taken based on available information in the system, for example.: production quantity predicted by editors, equipment allocation and technical restriction of each product.
Metrics integration with JobTrack keep the planning updated in real time, allowing the operators to see immediately any changes on the machines planning.  

The third project step is being finishing and integrates the editors to the process. The editors are in charge of giving information about magazines that will be produced and also responsible for the introduction of its orders to the graphic, informing products composition, quantities to produce, dates and distribution logistics. The challenge of this area is to make the use easy, allowing the lack of technician knowledge of the production process, important limitation for those who are not printing technician.
The system developed by METRICS obey this limitation because does not require the technical knowledge of the editor. A specialized system is able to define automatically the best way to produce a magazine based on the knowledge of equipment and productive process. In this way, the technical specification for production orders is automatically generated. A Workflow module allows the users to control all changes that happen during the process, taking some decisions to attend the production aim.

According to Mr. Baronni, after the last field tests in Abril production line, Metrics system can be considered a new tool of integrated management for great printing manufactures. “Among the news that Metrics has been introducing - by our request - there is an integration system that allows to the magazines editors the direct intervention in the production planning. The idea is the following: the editor specifies what he needs and the system has to be able to convert it automatically to production order”, he said.

Concerning Mr. Baronni opinion, this high automation level is the result of a strong relationship between Metrics and Abril to create a tool that allows to systematize the business intelligence that is in the process and also in the head of Abril professional. “The association between both companies allows us to configure all productive process in a mathematical way in order to do it measurable in all its steps”.

This project is a basic step to get the best-practices certificates of the Market. While the new Metrics system implementation is finishing, Abril develops the final reports that will present to “Fundação Nacional da Qualidade” to obtain the higher certification level of the industrial process that exists in the Country.

Talking about numbers

1.100 employees
45 thousand square metres
350 millions of printing exemplars per year, including magazines, supplement and special editions