Newspaper production is a complex and often suboptimised process, characterised by heterogeneous computer based production tools in a distributed environment. Attempts to optimize this process have generally been on a local subsystem level, without a global perspective. With the emerging IFRAtrack standard for exchanging local and global tracking information, new possibilities for global optimization are emerging.

This paper presents the Intranet client-server-server solution we have chosen as the platform for a Global Production Management System (GPMS) aimed at solving these problems. A production database contains the relevant information supplied by the local systems and acts as a global collector of production information. A web server communicates with the database through scripts and other mechanisms to dynamically retrieve and update its contents. Users interact with the system using WWW browsers, which provide the basis for the client user interface. Distributed code modules, applets, can provide functionality not supported by HTML.