Of course, achieving the stated objective – membership in the Color Quality Club as a recognised testimony to excellence in colour newspaper printing – is the top priority. But there are also many other reasons why participating in the competition is worthwhile.
Verifiable top quality
For Aaron Phipps, Operations Manager at Advance Central Services Michigan, this year’s only Color Quality Club member from the USA, it was important to have his company’s high standard of printing quality certified by an independent organisation. He sees the successful participation also “as confirmation for our employees that they are doing a good job. In addition, the competition offers a suitable means for keeping quality at a high level. It also helps us to demonstrate to our print customers that we are capable of supplying a consistently high-quality product,” he says. (Click here to see our expanded interview with Phipps.)
Reward for a major effort
André Ferreira, Process Engineering Coordinator at Infoglobo in Brazil, wanted to have an international benchmark for comparison in order to assess his company’s perception of printing quality. Ferreira’s team carried out an in-depth analysis of the process: “After we failed to reach the objective in 2012, we drew up a comprehensive action plan on the basis of the 2012 evaluation reports. We had three major challenges: control dot gain, fully understand the evaluation processes, and introduce an internal procedure along the lines of that of WAN-IFRA, i.e. applying the same conditions and with comparable measured values.“
Ample use was made of the possibilities of the online self-check: “We used it constantly – a very practical tool,” says Ferreira. ”To be in the Color Quality Club was a strategic objective for our company – one that we have achieved.” (Click here to see our expanded interview with Ferreira)
Their presses are from the late 1970s, but the team of Prensa Libre has succeeded in joining the Color Quality Club. This proves that state-of-the-art technology is not a precondition to be successful: it is as important to dominate the process.“We have a very committed team,” says Erick Morales, Production Manager at Prensa Libre in Guatemala, who, however, had to convince his people that “the quality required by the needs of the 21st-century market” could also be produced with older equipment – the presses are from 1978. (Click here to see our expanded interview with Morales).
Building up knowledge is essential
Muharrem Yaşar of Feza Gezetecilik in Turkey, one of the proud members of the Club.Muharrem Yaşar of Feza Gezetecilik says it is important to build up an in-house pool of consolidated knowledge concerning colour printing quality and to establish a quality system. His company did not succeed in becoming a club member on the first try. Success came only after intensive examination of the subject matter, so that the company that produces five Zaman titles at five printing sites is now once again to be found among the club members.
Yaşar took a practical example to illustrate the difficulties that can be encountered: “Our greatest problem was to control dot gain in the mid-tones,“ he says. It became apparent that not only did different densitometers supply different measured values, but also that using just one instrument to measure the same colour patch can produce different results if only the orientation of the instrument is changed (lengthwise or crosswise) when measuring.
The winners of the benchmark competition will be duly honoured at the World Publishing Expo 2014 in Amsterdam. The induction will take place during a ceremony on 15 October, while there will also be a gallery displaying the members’ newspapers within the exhibition halls.
If you are involved in Newspaper Production and Management, you should consider attending the inaugural conference of the World Printers Forum at the RAI in Amsterdam on 15 and 16 October 2014, that will give both newspaper production professionals and suppliers a place to gather and exchange ideas, create standards and develop strategies for the future of print.
Impressions from the 2012 Awarding Ceremony on Flickr:
