by JimRaffel on June 28, 2007
I have been so immersed in virtual proofing over the last several posts, that I had almost forgotten how much I still love the smell of ink in the morning. Last week I had the privilege of spending two days assisting a customer in the set-up of our software primarily for use as a pressroom monitoring tool.
The experience reminded me of #55: Just Measure It! The customer is a web offset shop and has the same problem that most of our digital printing customers have (Oh, I love the smell of toner in the morning too!). The problem is that their press product is finished product and has no trim. Color bars are not an option on production work, and changing the design to incorporate color swatches would also be impractical at this time.
The solution turned out to be the same solution we employee with our digital printing customers. A test form is put on press twice a day and the results of those measurements are used to verify conformance to density standards across the web. A second control strip can be scanned to gather other print metrics like TVI, Print Contrast, etc.
The results in a sister shop have been improved consistency from day to day and the ability to monitor changes in density and TVI from morning (cold press) to afternoon (warm press). In a perfect world I would love to see color bars on every job, but we thought outside the box and found them a solution that allowed us to measure. Once they started measuring quality and consistency improved. Profitability and productivity are never far behind quality and consistency improvements.
I raise the challenge again…today start measuring something in your color workflow that you are not measuring today. Within seven days those measurements will point the direction you need to go to improve the quality and consistency of that process.
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by JimRaffel on November 17, 2006
Earlier this month I was visiting a customer who utilizes multiple ColorMetrix licenses to monitor and control; plate making; proofing; and pressroom. Several years ago this customer used ColorMetrix in his plate making operation to uncover a processor replenishment problem that not even the plate vendor was able to unravel. During this visit, he told me about a recent experience involving a pressman who came to him asking for a new plate so that he could achieve a match on press. For some reason he could not get the cyan to fall in appropriately. My customer consulted his ColorMetrix plate database and confirmed that the plate was properly made. He then measured a press sheet provided by the pressman and compared it to his historical data for that press and paper combination. The cyan dot gain (TVI) was about 10 points away from the expected values.
He agreed to make a new plate with an adjusted curve in the interest of getting the job off press with acceptable color, but also suggested the pressman take a long hard look at the cyan printing unit. Before the plate was even processed the pressman returned and said to never mind he had uncovered a roller problem in the cyan unit.
Yes, all the data collection our client does takes time and effort, but what is an hour of your press time worth? He pointed out that this is not an isolated occurrence. Just having a densitometer and measuring density and dot gain would have done no good in this situation. My customer and his pressman needed to know what the expected density and dot gain would be on the press and paper combination being run.
By simply measuring the OK sheet from most jobs, within 30 days you will have a very substantial database to fall back on when problems like the one illustrated above occur. So, process control is not free, but instead an investment with a fairly easy to calculate return. There are more examples of how process control has saved our clients money at here at JimRaffel.com, so feel free to read the archives.
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