5 Business Considerations for Color Quality Assurance Software

Monitor Color Quality Worldwide: Cloud based color quality assurance software allows organizations with multiple presses and print facilities to remotely manage and monitor customer jobs via the Internet or the firm’s Intranet. This provides the ability to remotely monitor the color quality of multiple jobs in real-time, in multiple locations, using a, smart phone or tablet or network connected computer. The software thus enables:

• excellent color reproduction quality throughout an entire print run
• accurate and consistent color reproduction for multiple independent runs of the same printed product from week to week or year to year
• consistent color reproduction for multiple independent runs of the same printed product from one printer or location to another

Ensure Customer Satisfaction: Digital, flexographic and packaging printers alike can ensure customer satisfaction with color quality assurance software. The software enables printers to provide accurate and consistent color quality on every print job in every plant for every customer. It also allows printers to provide immediate feedback on how well the job is conforming to customer tolerances thus validating the actual color quality of the print job.

Reduce Costs and Minimize Waste: Paper and ink waste are easily minimized and often times eliminated with the implementation of color quality assurance software. Press operators or quality control personnel can easily monitor the press run as the software collects color data and displays an intuitive graphic and numeric interface of the measured colors on the monitor. The availability of this real-time data allows press operators to catch inconsistencies and color issues early on in the process. The reduction of ink and paper waste ultimately translates into substantial savings for these materials on an ongoing basis.

Improve Plant and Press Efficiency: Monitoring the color quality of the job on press enables early problem detection in the print process thus helping to reduce the number of re-makes. Press operators become more efficient equipped with the ability to set color tolerances for Density, Delta E and Dot Gain which provides immediate feedback on how well the job is conforming to customer tolerances. The software enables press operators and quality assurance personnel the ability to easily create, edit, and manage multiple color libraries so that a job being printed on multiple presses, or in multiple plants, is using the same target reference color tolerance values thus improving single plant and multiple plant efficiency exponentially.

Gather Real-Time Trending and Reporting: All personnel involved in the print production process will benefit from the statistical reporting and trending available through color quality assurance software. The software allows users to generate detailed reports for a single press run or multiple press runs of a job, for internal quality control personnel, press room managers or the print specifier. Users are also able to run an in-depth trend analysis of specific colors in print jobs that are printed on multiple presses, across different facilities and that are printed on a recurring basis. Following the performance trends of those jobs over time allows users to easily identify areas that need improvement, such as ink supply issues, press specific mechanical problems or overall improvement in process control guidelines.