Among other things Dale Dylong, General Maintenance Manager, maintains the clocks at CNN’s world headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. While this may not be the biggest issue Dylong deals with, it is significant for time is of the essence to those who inhabit the CNN Center.

Broadcast news is a business where the consequences of having your timing off by a few seconds can range from a clumsy presentation to a total disconnect in delivery of the news. In fact, clocks are an integral symbol for all those at CNN who gather and deliver news around the clock from bureaus in every time zone around the world.

Symbolic of the importance of the around-the-clock concept is the company’s use of actual clock faces in its corporate headquarters and in its newscasts. Many CNN newscasts prominently feature the company’s signature tag line “Real news. Real fast. 24 hours a day. Seven days a week. 365 days a year.”

Clock imagery is a prominent graphic element in much of the company’s set design, including a video of a turning clock that is used to open some of its news shows and as a backdrop to some of its feature segments. The main news set at the CCN Center incorporates a display of 24 actual clocks representing the 24 time zones of the world. The décor of the public atrium of the CNN Center in Atlanta, Georgia where the company’s corporate headquarters reside features a map of the world and clocks showing the 24 time zones and CNN’s bureaus. Visitors to the facility are literally surrounded by CNN’s 24/7/365 concept.

When Ted. Turner, founder and chairman of the board of CNN, or any member of the several hundred employees at the headquarters see the hands of the clocks in the atrium off by just a few seconds, it’s a big deal. And when the clocks are off they call Dale Dylong.

Dylong had standard quartz clocks in place for many years, but they needed to be adjusted frequently because of the drift factor, one could never be quite sure the clocks in the atrium were the same as the clocks in the newsroom, and when the daylight saving time switch occurred twice a year, it was a big job to change the time on all the clocks. CNN found the solution with the Primex Wireless GPS Clock System.

Now when you sit in the atrium at CNN Center in Atlanta, you know that you are on time with CNN 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. And, even though he is still a very busy man, Dale Dylong has one less thing to take up his time.

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Northwestern Mutual, its subsidiaries and affiliates offer insurance and investment products and advisory services that address client needs for financial protection, capital accumulation, asset distribution and estate preservation. Products include permanent and term life insurance, disability income insurance, long-term care insurance and annuity plans for personal, business, estate planning and pension markets; trust services; mutual funds and other securities. Northwestern Mutual Financial Network is the sales and distribution arm of the company, with more than 350 sales offices and 7,800 financial representatives across the United States.

The company’s home offices are located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin where about 4,400 corporate employees reside. This campus comprises three buildings. The oldest was built in 1912, the newest was built in 1990. A new campus in Franklin, Wisconsin is scheduled to open in 2004.

There are many functions of the company that require Northwestern Mutual’s employees to come together in a timely fashion every day, including extensive training programs for finanicial representatives and employees, call center representatives, as well as conferences and meetings.

On any given day in the corporate headquarters, there are approximately 600 scheduled meetings that occur. These meetings may include anywhere from three to thirty people. There are 153 conference rooms spread throughout the facility. The flow of people through those spaces is managed through a central software program. It is important that meetings start and finish on time in order to keep the flow of business smooth, efficient, and productive.

A hard-wired synchronized clock system was installed in all Northwestern Mutual’s buildings during a renovation that occurred in 1976. Through time the number of company clocks in the system grew to about 350 throughout the facility, six to a floor, hung so that everyone in a given work area could see them. The idea was that everyone would have the correct time and no one would have the clocks to blame for tardiness to a meeting.

All of the wall clocks in the hard-wired system were connected to one another and to a “master” unit via electrical conduit. They were synchronized to each other when the master delivered an electrical impulse periodically throughout the day.

While this was a good idea and worked for a while, it was an imperfect system. The rate of failure among the clocks throughout the building was high and synchronization from one building to another was consistently off by up to five minutes.

The clocks used in the system were older mechanical clocks (as opposed to quartz cloks that are now considered standard). So the drift factor, or time that clocks would lose between synchronization signals, was high. At any given moment in time about 25%, or more than 85 of the clocks in the system, were off by three to five minutes. And the further away from the master, the less strong the signal, which also affected the time drift for clocks in an entire zone of the building.

When the time changed twice a year the master would convey the revised time. At those times there were about 50 clocks that failed to make the change. If a manager wanted to hang another clock within his/her work area there would be debates about where the clock could be placed or the expense related to extending electrical conduit to the new location.

Maintenance expenses were incurred to monitor the clocks throughout the building daily, to reset the 85+ that were off every day, to repair mechanical movements that wore out, to install additional clocks, and to reset clocks that failed to “spring forward or fall back” when the time changed. Nerves were frazzled as meetings would start late, productive time was wasted, and business managers registered daily complaints to facilities managers about clocks not keeping time.

In sum, synchronized time was a good idea, but the time system they had was causing grief, costing the company money in terms of maintenance and lost productivity, and was diverting managers’ attention from more important issues.

In 2000, Northwestern Mutual saught a better solution to alleviate the issues of an imperfect time system. The company approached Primex Wireless, which is part of a 30-year-old company specializing in the clock industry as well as an innovator in wireless synchronized time solutions.

Primex had pioneered the development of wireless analog clocks using radio frequencies in the United States. Northwestern Mutual was one of the first customers to implement the Primex Wireless GPS Clock System, the most precise, most reliable wireless synchronized clock system available.

The system consists of a master unit, which includes a GPS receiver, a 16 x 12” casing, and a 46” high FM antenna, and the freestanding, battery-operated analog wall clocks. The master captures the official time signal from US Global Positioning Satellites and transmits the time to the clocks via a local FM frequency. You can have as many clocks in a system as you need. There is no load diminishment for the number of clocks. The area that the transmitter covers may vary depending on the building and other frequency interferance factors such as rf-shielded rooms or terrain.

Northwestern Mutual installed its master unit in an inconspicuous location in the atrium of its main building and the clocks were hung right over the junction boxes where the old hard-wired clocks were previously positioned. Installation of the system was easy and accomplished in only 10 days. Five masters cover all 350 clocks that are spread throughout four buildings in the headquarters campus, including clocks installed in the basement and sub-basement.

Since the Primex Wireless GPS Clock System was installed, all 350 clocks in the system have run in perfect synchronization—to the second. The facilities mangers are now freed up to attend to more important issues. Repair issues are non-existant, the clocks never need to be adjusted, and they self-adjust for Daylight Saving Time.

There is a large improvement for the facilities managers. According to Greg Junek, Manager of Facility Technical Services, “We used to get 7 calls a week from managers angry about clocks being off somewhere in the building. Now there are none. And if someone is late to a meeting, they can’t blame the clocks!”