ChromaQA and the Power of Big Data

We hear a lot about “big data” these days.  It’s being used to track your shopping habits, send you targeted advertising, and even develop cures for life threatening ailments such as cancer.  However, I’d like to take a minute and tell you the benefits of big data as it relates to the Techkon color quality solution called ChromaQA and how your print production environment can benefit from the power of big data.

The ChromaQA print quality platform uses a SQL Server at its core to store and track the measured color results of every print job put through the system.  Much of the data stored is automatically entered by ChromaQA such as the job names, color names, measured deltaE results, operator names, dates/times, etc.  However, throughout the ChromaQA workflow, users can also manually add or tag meta data to the jobs themselves.  These meta data fields are completely customizable and could include data such as “shift”, “press”, “substrate”, “ink vendor”, “plate type”, etc.  In fact, the more meta data that gets tagged to each job, the more options you will have to interact with the measured data and learn about your print production.

So now let’s talk about how a print Quality Manager can extract this data stored in the ChromaQA Server and benefit from it.  ChromaQA makes this process easy by including an entire software module designed to build specific database query’s based on what you are trying to learn about your production process.  For example, a quality manager can build a simple query to show the final job scores of an item or sku printed in a specific timeframe across all print locations or they can choose to have this information broken down by print location, press, shift, operator, substrate, plate type, etc.  Again, these are just a few simple examples and it’s important to remember that the system is completely customizable to track any set of parameters desired by the print quality department and to report on whatever elements are important to them.  Even with the relatively simple query described above, a quality manager can easily learn how the substrate or plate type is affecting the resulting job scores which could steer future purchasing decisions and runs of that job to ultimately save money or improve the color accuracy depending on the needs of the printer.

So that’s a quick overview of the Query module which is included in Techkon’s ChromaQA color quality platform and how big data can be used to improve your color accuracy, shorten make-ready times, and ultimately save you money.  If you want to learn more about how ChromaQA can help in your environment or would like a free trial, please reach out to us at info@techkonusa.com