By Pratik Nayak
This report on the Industrial visit to the Times Of India press on 25th august ‘11, presents an overview of the intellectual gain and exposure to the’ behind the scene’ happenings at the operations department of the print media giant.
The word ‘press’ itself invokes an impression of dirt, wastage and pollution but reality could not have been more contradicting. The peripherals of the press presented a view which was not even close to the archaic impression of a typical press, an evidence of the increasing eco-friendly attitude of these kinds of industries.
INTELLECTUAL GAIN[/b]
The visit started off with a presentation made by the Vice president of the press’s Bangalore , Hyderabad and chennai division, Mr. Alan Carvalho, on the mission, vision and functioning of the press.
The mission of the press was to produce the best quality product everyday, on time, meeting or beating the budget without any accident with commitment to social responsibility in an environment nurturing individual growth. We were also told that the press had only four official holidays in a calendar year indicative of the amount of effort, dedication and the level of consistency that goes behind the neatly folded newspaper lying on the doormat every morning.
We were also given an insight on the different portfolios and reporting bureaus that were fundamental to the smooth operation of the print media giant. There were mainly two kinds of jobs when it came to collecting and structuring news, the ‘Reporting ’ part which included covering of events by full time and part time correspondents and photographers and the ‘Desk’ part which included putting the news together and structuring it e.g Giving headlines. The different kinds of active reporting bureaus were Politics, Metro life, Business, Sports, Supplements and The Bangalore Mirror.
TECHNICAL INSIGHT[/b]
The industrial visit also provided us with the knowledge of some of the technical aspects like the kind of high end machines deployed at the press, the kind of colours used in printing including their densities and the error tolerance, the kind of paper used and the functioning of the main units of the of the press.
We also came to know that most of the sophisticated machinery like the REGIOMAN units which churned out an impressive 1,50,000 copies per hour were imported from Germany and were priced at 100 crores each. The employees handling these powerful and expensive machines were trained by experts from Germany. Unavailability of indigenous technology and the skills required to handle these machines seemed to be a matter of concern
considering the huge cost incurred in the procurement, handling and maintenance of these machines.
All the news arriving at different times of the day were sorted and structured by the AMSS server which segregated all the news according to serial number. The reels used for printing were 27.5 inches reel for flysheets and 41.25 inches of reel for vertical flops.All the reels were loaded in the ground floor and printed in the second and third floor and were then sent to the ground floor for packaging.
The colours that were used for printing were Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. These colours were used instead of the conventional RGB combination because of the fact that print media required subtractive colouring technique instead of the additive colouring technique used in electronic media, to avoid smudging. A density level of 0.8, 0.85,0.80 and 1.15 was adhered to for the colours Cyan, Magenta ,Yellow and Black respectively with a tolerance level of 0.05.The adherence to these standards and commitment to great colour quality was a big objective of the press. Any compromise in this case would result in a loss of revenues from the advertisers. The Times Group had even won the Gold medal in a international level competition organised by INCQC(International Colour Quality Club) for their exceptional colour quality.
The whole system had a fault tolerant and would stall in case of any error. These errors included paper tear off, smudging and defective copies which were immediately rejected automatically.
MANAGERIAL INSIGHT[/b]
The managerial aspect of the whole process included managing day-to-day operations at the press, managing last minute entries to the content of a particular copy, adhering to ethics and most importantly motivating the employees.
During the presentation Mr.Carvalho cited an instance which displayed their strong integrity and strict adherence to ethics. It was when famous physicist C V Raman was in a critical condition and was about to breathe his last, most of the newspapers came out with the news that he was dead. When the TOI correspondents reached the spot they discovered that although the great scientist was in a very critical condition he had not breathed his last. Hence TOI went ahead and published the same. The next morning Sir Raman breathed his last and all the news papers were with the latest news except for TOI. The next day TOI came out with a full article on what really happened and it was widely praised across the industry.
When it came to motivating employees, Mr. Carvalho stressed the importance of being concerned with employee needs and satisfaction. According to him, motivating employees is very important to derive excellent performance from the later taking into consideration the amount of effort, dedication and consistency required in the industry to maintain an edge. Good working conditions, good hygiene were some of the things that motivated the employees at the TOI press, maintained Mr. Carvalho. The’ champions of champions’ trophy displayed at the entrance and the writings embossed at the back of the uniforms of the employees demonstrated the active role of the management in motivating the employees.
THE Q & A SECTION[/b]
The presentation was followed by a Q&A section which sorted many of our doubts on various technical and managerial aspects. Some of the important questions asked were regarding the strategy adopted by TOI to respond to any abrupt changes in demand in the future, innovation and managing the various business units of the TIMES GROUP like the print media and the electronic media.
CONCLUSION[/b]
In a nutshell, the industrial visit to the TOI press, based in the Bommasandra industrial area of Bangalore, was a very exciting and enriching experience. It provided us with the exposure to the behind the scene happenings and the paraphernalia required in various operations of the press. It also helped us in understanding the real life applications of various managerial concepts.