As we celebrate World Press Freedom this May, deadline-driven reporters can have more time to finish those important scoops. Today, newspapers - such as Knight Ridder's Wichita Eagle - are taking advantage of the high reliability offered by automation innovation, which is allowing reporters to go up to the very minute of the press deadline to finish stories and helping to bring their articles to front doors worldwide. Pushing against a deadline isn't a worry with highly reliable presses designed by KBA, one of the world's largest providers of newspaper printing presses, and featuring automation from GE Fanuc, a joint venture between GE and FANUC LTD of Japan.

With the automated KBA presses, these newspapers have been able to achieve nearly 100-percent uptime - along with faster production and less paper waste.

Read All about It

Vice President of Technology Jan Lindstrom explains that KBA has traditionally been a company of firsts. "KBA was the first company to have digital splicers, shaftless drives, and other technologies on our newspaper presses," Lindstrom says. "We're providing newspapers with reliability, cost and time savings, higher productivity, and greater ease of use."

With a new machine design, KBA sought to leverage control concepts that had been used in other industries but were new to newspaper printing. The team worked with distributor Advent Electric to employ controllers from GE Fanuc to ensure the highest reliability possible.

"GE Fanuc is a stable company with proven controller technology," Lindstrom explains. "Our machines make 70,000 copies per hour at maximum speed, and the newspaper can't afford to be 10 minutes late. In the press room, the machines have to work every time, all the time."

In the press room, the GE Fanuc controllers on the KBA presses monitor thousands of input/output points, ranging from water valves for washing out ink to the reel that feeds the paper. A shaftless drive system, which allows each unit on the press to operate independently, and the controllers provide such reliable, precise control that operators only need to run one press-length worth of paper before getting good copies, which reduces the amount of paper waste.

"Paper is the most expensive part of the printing process," Lindstrom notes, "so reducing the amount of wasted paper is a key cost benefit for newspapers as well as an environmental win."

These are benefits that any newspaper can run with - particularly as we celebrate World Press Freedom!

About World Press Freedom

World Press Freedom Day was established by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1993 and is celebrated every year in early May, but has much deeper roots. The United Nations' Article 19 of the 1948 Universal Declaration on Human Rights states: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."

Throughout the world, the month of May serves as an occasion to inform the public of violations of the right to freedom of expression and as a reminder that many journalists brave death or jail to bring people their daily news