January 28, 2003 -- MAN Roland, the world’s second-largest printing press manufacturer and the world’s leader in web printing, will implement short-time work schedules in all its Augsburg production sectors. The new policy takes effect in February this year for an initial period of six months. MAN Roland is compensating for gaps in its utilization capacities until scheduled large-scale projects actually commence. The underlying cause of reduced industry demand is the slump in the advertising market, which has made many printing companies and publishing houses put their investment plans, if only temporarily, on hold. This development is now affecting the web-fed press sector. Until recently, web offset production facilities were relatively well-stocked with an adequate number of long-term orders (as is normal in machine manufacturing). Now, however, this cushion has been used up. The Plauen facilities, which also produce web-offset systems, will work at capacity until May. Sheet-fed production operations in the Rhein-Main have been working on short-time schedules since March 2002 due to the sector’s faster production cycles, common to series production, and orders on hand that decrease accordingly. Over the course of 2002 company management launched a range of flexible work capacity control instruments that included measures to work off time credit of +/- 140 hours, and to level off internal capacities between the plants, preretirement part-time work, part-time work models, and sabbaticals. Also, time-limited work contracts are being allowed to expire without renewal, and temporary labor contracts have been discontinued. Around 3200 men and women work in Augsburg. They produce web-offset presses for newspaper printing (every third newspaper produced in the world is printed on a MAN Roland press) and for high-quality commercial products such as brochures, catalogs, magazines, and inserts. MAN Roland has its headquarters in Offenbach and Augsburg, Germany, with a staff of around 10,000, annual sales of approximately EUR 2 billion, and an export share of 80%.