Technical Services Management

In a Multi-Media Communications Centre

At a time when the new Europe is becoming a reality, Geneva intends to become an international hub of communication and a world centre for telecommunications. In the wake of this orientation, the Compagnie Internationale pour la Communication (Cl Corn), whose activities extend throughout Europe and North America, has built the Multi-Media Communications Centre at Vernier, in the canton of Geneva (Switzerland).

The MMCC already has an ultra­modern printing plant used by Sonor SA, publisher of the "La Suisse" daily newspaper.

Sonor SA contracted Graphic Engineering AG to programme the construction of the plant. Telemecanique AG of Berne in partnership with Industrie General Bau AG and Redelco SA, was given the task of technical management of all the buildings comprising the printing plant: air conditioning, thermal and electrical refrigeration plant, and safety and security supervision.

The mmcc

With a floor area of almost 10 000 m² and a volume of 58 000 m³, the printing plant is the first stage of the MMCC project. It includes a store room for reels of paper, a production shop for offset printing plates, a rotary press, a dispatch room and several technical services areas.

• A rail link enables direct delivery of the reels of paper and offloading into an air-conditioned store room. The storage capacity corresponds to two months consumption, or approximately 1200 tons.

• A network of conveyors feeds 7 unwinders and the offset printing machines, which comprise a Wifag rotary press, with 6 printing units driven by 180 kW motors and 2 folding machines. These machines, which are able to produce 2 newspapers of 64 and 32 pages simultaneously -with 4-colour printing on-one side and black plus a second colour on the other - at a maximum speed of 32 500 copies per hour are remotely controlled from an air-conditioned control room.

• The dispatch room has facilities for making inserts, for preparing each night the 7000 parcels of 4 to 50 newspapers, to address them and sort them according to the final destination.

• The various technical services rooms, house the standby generator sets and the complex power and fluid processing plants required for the operation and cooling of the rotary press together with the air conditioning of the building. These installations, designed and built by Gruenberg & Partner AG and Chaleur SA, include the dehumidified air production units for drying the output from the rotary press and the flow of iced water. Another feature is that the heating and general hot water for the building is partly supplied by heat recovered from certain parts of the. rotary press.

The Objectives

The printing plant operates 24 hours a day throughout the year. Continuity of production is therefore of paramount importance and must be ensured according to the "Just-in-time" principle. It was therefore necessary to:

• optimise energy consumption round-the-clock,

• ensure the safety and availability of the installations,

• ensure exchange of data between complex equipment in a simple manner,

• provide control, monitoring and measurement at all stages of the production process to enable follow-up at all times,

• make available a reliable, effective maintenance tool.