September 17 2021 - Melbourne - Despite the obstacles associated with bringing a six person technical team to Melbourne from Milan, Parvis has delivered this important project within the four-month timeframe as originally planned. The ABACO-MES (Manufacturing Execution System) will enable NPA to accurately count, track and record the operations of its printing presses, to detect sheet handling anomalies and to generally enable efficient and secure daily printing activity. The Parvis team was led by Roberto Latorraca.
“Personally, I would say there has never been a more critical effort in any project I’ve been involved in,” says Roberto. “The planning was complicated and the execution very demanding, but NPA were a great support and did everything to make sure we never lost a single day. Clearly this has not been the most pleasant moment with so many restrictions, but I couldn’t be happier with the outcome.”
If there was a defining theme for this project, it was undoubtedly ‘adapting to change’. After a thorough and detailed planning period, the Parvis team arrived in Melbourne and immediately went into hotel quarantine.
“We arrived on April 25th and didn’t know where we were going to stay, but as it turns out it was a short trip to the Park Royal Hotel. We used isolation to work quite a lot. We were working every day and managed to do a lot of important things ahead of our arrival on-site,” says Roberto. “Simon (Molan – NPA’s Project Engineer) was helping us right from our arrival. For example, the hotel had a very poor internet connection so he dropped off a dongle to assist with coverage.”
Amongst other things, the project was required to reorganise planned work due to raw material shortages. This included ink supplies being impacted by the Suez Canal incident in which a container ship blocked the canal for six days – the backlog of ships was so extensive that the delivery was delayed for six weeks. Roberto says it was very satisfying to be able to adjust to the challenges in order to keep within the timeframe.
“We staggered our team in Melbourne, but in total we had six staff altogether at different stages plus remote support from our office in Milan. The results we reached so far are very good – the super users and Print Hall are capable are working autonomously without intervention. They require maybe two to three months of support until they’re fully independent.”
From NPA’s perspective, Simon confirmed that the project’s delivery is a significant milestone that was achieved while building a strong and positive working relationship with the Parvis team.
“It’s been a pleasure to work with Roberto and his team in the implementation of this project. They have all put in an incredible effort install all the ABACO systems and train all personnel over the past few months, and I have been very impressed by their professionalism and flexibility in dealing with some of the challenges faced when fitting in their work around day-to-day operations at NPA,” says Simon.