The order for the project had been placed by KBA, the manufacturer of Al-Ahram’s KBA Commander press with eight printing towers, two folders and twelve reelstands. The scope of the project included the latest version of the press management system, MPS Production, six new control consoles as well as drives and drives controls for the twelve reelstands and infeeds.

The upgrading of the MPS Production press management system was particularly noteworthy. The existing system, which ran under the operating system OpenVMS, had been in service for approaching 20 years, but the ABB engineers were nevertheless able to transfer all production data, including the very valuable press preset values, from the old system to the new one.

Mr. Ibrahim El-Ghamry, the director general of Al-Ahram Printing Press, recognizes the importance of the retrofit project: “the ABB retrofit helps to secure the availability of our presses in the coming years”.

“The modular solutions from ABB meant that we could modernize the operation of our presses with minimal impact on our nightly production”, said Mr. El-Ghamry. “We have had a long relationship with ABB and remain impressed with their solutions and also the competence of their engineers.”

ABB is a leading automation supplier to the newspaper industry. ABB Printing (www.abb.com/printing) delivers solutions that provide unique and totally integrated end-to-end control, protect existing investments and provide management information essential to improving profitability.

ABB (www.abb.com) is a leader in power and automation technologies that enable utility and industry customers to improve performance while lowering environmental impact. The ABB Group of companies operates in around 100 countries and employs about 150,000 people.