Prepress
WARNERS OPTS FOR GMG PRINTCONTROL IN ITS QUEST FOR ISO 12647
Tuesday 13. October 2009 - The Lincolnshire print group has found that process control tools keeps it ahead of the pack and on course for certification
Warners Midlands has chosen GMG PrintControl and RapidCheck process control software in its mission to achieve ISO 12647. The Lincolnshire family-run magazine, brochure and catalogue business is dedicated to attaining the highest print standards in all respects.
“We always strive for ‘better than excellent’,” says Warners systems manager Glenn Dawson. “We wanted to improve the quality and repeatability of our work. We were already users of an early version of another product, but we decided to switch to GMG because of its reputation in the industry.”
Reputations, distinction and service are part of Warners’ culture and history and it offers flexibility to its customers with its capacity to deliver both web and sheetfed printing on its state of the art equipment. The company has already been awarded ISO 9001 certification for its loyalty to customer quality demands and its adherence to print regulations applicable to products and services. Each of its clients has a dedicated customer service representative to oversee each project and attend to any needs or concerns from beginning to end of the production process.
Warners has always been confident in its ability to print reasonably consistently and have always used press specific CTP adjustment curves in its platesetter Rips, so the move towards ISO 12647 was relatively straightforward. “Employing process control software allows us to reliably match sections across different presses,” says Dawson, “and to match ISO proofs used within the workflow.”
The move to GMG came after meetings with reseller Xelix, now GMG UK, which included a comprehensive demonstration of the software, including installation and training. “We felt very comfortable with their approach to ISO calibration, and were also attracted by the level of knowledge and cost-effectiveness of the service support options available,” says Dawson.
GMG UK’s Toby Burnett, former managing director of Xelix, says that Warners’ decision to use GMG expertise proved to be a trouble-free and undemanding move. “ISO 12647 is actually quite simple to achieve,” he says. “Warners was already working to tight manufacturing tolerances. All we had to do was install GMG’s process control software and slightly adjust the parameters to which the whole print group was already working. It took a very short time to get the whole plant into specification.”
GMG PrintControl is a highly intuitive method of enabling uncomplicated standardization and control of printing presses. It performs a series of checks including: determination of the optimum printing density; analysis of the gray balance; measurement of the tone value and spread; checking of primary and secondary colours; generation of CTP correction curves.
An ISO-compliant report is generated for every job, and as a result, the printing conditions can be traced and rechecked at any time. The software also contains a database for analytical purposes that provides an overview of the past and present status of the press. This is the only way to ensure that the prints that the press delivers are always of the same quality.
RapidCheck supplies all the relevant information about any given printing job based on one single measuring procedure. It guarantees maximum production reliability, absolutely reliable quality control and traceability and legal certainty.
“We regularly use PrintControl for the comprehensive features available within the application such as its capacity to generate reports,” says Dawson. “RapidCheck’s control strip is applied wherever space on the printed sheet allows. Sometimes run lengths dictate that we run specific test jobs to determine the current press conditions.”
After a relatively stress-free process, Warners has now successfully profiled each press to remain faithful to the relevant ISO specification and the results have fulfilled expectations. Colour discrepancies have been eradicated and each press is guaranteed to achieve ISO 12647. The result is a successful match between the end result and the Fogra 39L proofs supplied by customers. “Inter-press colour consistency has improved,” says Dawson. “We are also more capable of quantifying the results of any work we carry out on the presses to improve colour.”
Dawson predicts that colour management will become invisible in the future: “I think ultimately process control and colour management will become integrated in the prepress workflow applications, leading to automated creation and selection of calibration curves.”