Harland Simon Continue Upgrades at The Des Moines Register, IA

Chicago, IL, November 27, 2015 --(PR.com)-- Harland Simon is delighted to announce the completion of an upgrade to replace the proprietary Interbus Loop Encoders on a manroland press at The Des Moines Register, IA, one of Gannett’s largest newspapers. This project was carried out without disruption to production and, as part of a multi-phase upgrade, has already seen the replacement of the press control system on three manroland Geoman presses. This included the upper level management system, control consoles, on-unit hardware, reelstand controls and parts of the Baumuller drive system.

Replacing the proprietary Interbus Loop Encoders, Harland Simon engineers have installed remote I/O at The Des Moines Register in order to facilitate a better way of interfacing to new devices. This enables the use of off-the-shelf components such as proximity sensors which are more readily available and often at a lower cost. Prior to the upgrade the publication was relying on using rarely available parts with built-in fieldbus interfaces to connect with their manroland system.

John Staiano, Managing Director – Americas for Harland Simon comments: “Separating this project into multiple phases has allowed The Des Moines Register to maximize their upgrade potential, whilst minimizing cost and impact on production.”

The extensive experience of Harland Simon’s project managers and engineers of carrying out this type of retrofit helped ensure that the project was completed without requiring any down time. Harland Simon uses off-the-shelf hardware which means that if components fail, these can be sourced locally from multiple suppliers, ensuring parts are always available and at a competitive price. Coupled with using control software that is open and available to the end user, this approach has helped build an enduring maintenance partnership with The Des Moines Register and other newspaper publishers around the globe.