Three years ago Times Citizen moved into their new expanded plant and in doing so acquired additional printing capacity. Along with continuing to print their own newspapers, management wanted to increase the amount of outside commercial work including newspapers, inserts and publications. In doing so, the company recognized that the internally developed management systems were inadequate to support their growth plans. A decision was taken to find and implement an integrated print management system that was particularly suited for the newspaper printing industry. After a comprehensive selection process the Technique MIS and shop floor data collection was selected and implemented and Times Citizen are now seeing major benefits.

Jay Luther, Project Manager, Times Citizen “One of the big things we like about Technique is that from the moment we quote a job to completion everything is in one place and can be easily accessed. With Technique we can also turn our quotes around quickly which gives us a competitive advantage. We have empowered our sales people to produce their own quotes using the estimating module of Techniques, which again helps our responsiveness.

The scheduling module makes it easy to see at a glance what is on the press and what is coming up. Also, what step we are in the printing process, for example, have we received the plates yet?  It is also a simple matter to make changes to the schedule.

The inventory module has been a big time saver and has helped us to keep better track of paper coming into the plant. We are now able to scan the rolls directly to the software and then keep track of what is being used.

On the shop floor we are using Technique DC Simple software . This has been helpful in keeping track of our press runs and materials being used. We expect this feature to help us continually reduce waste and keep better track of our expenses.”