Soſtware & Controls
Quality in automation By Piet De Pauw, head of marketing at Enfocus.
W
e’ve all read articles about the importance of automation. We’ve all read articles about the essential aspects of quality control. By now, nearly everyone understands that automation is more than an MIS which emails some jobs specs and a link to a PDF file. Everyone also understands that quality control goes beyond counting the number of jobs rejected by customers after they are delivered. Automation should be engrained in the workflow from file receipt to shipping. Quality control should be the guy who starts early and leaves late. Obviously, this conversation will become laborious to keep talking about these aspects of business in parallel. And since quality control and automation should be part of the same discussion, let’s continue under that assumption, shall we? Ah, the old adage, “junk in, junk out.” That’s more or less an excuse for printers not to care. From the print service side, the customer must not care or know any better. That’s why they arrive bearing such disastrous files. From the customer’s point of view, the printer is the expert, so they need to make the job look good.
We can make both sides of this paradigm synergize in an elegant way. Well, since that statement only makes sense to marketers and could apply to any two entities in any business, back to reality we go. The point is that job quality control has to start with the accuracy and printability of files at the time a print service provider takes ownership. For a
better customer experience and for a better prepress experience, the files should be checked at handover. Let the customer know as soon as possible if they will need to make some changes. In order to do that, there has to be some preflight automation before prepress. Maybe pre-prepress will become a thing as long as it’s automated.
The next phase in keeping the happy quality-automation couple together is at prepress. Prepress has to preflight. It’s what they live for. Sitting at a workstation, manually checking file after file is neither productive, nor conducive to keeping skilled personnel coming into work every day. Preflight is the cornerstone to job file quality control. It’s also tedious and monotonous, a perfect candidate for automation. Performing file checks inline with workflow accomplishes several things. It breaks up the logjam of files waiting for manual inspection. It dictates consistency in the way files are checked. And it frees up prepress to tackle more complex job issues. Before heading farther down the tracks, we have to touch on proofing. PDF proofing is widely accepted in many avenues of print. We all do it. We tax prepress with checking files, creating a proof PDF, which may not be representative of the production file, and either combine that with a preflight report or simply turn the proof around as quickly as possible. Things fall through the cracks. Prepress gets interrupted repeatedly throughout the day. The customer gets
frustrated at long proofing cycles. You see where this is going. There are big advantages in automating the quality control step at PDF proofing.
Moving forward in the workflow, imposition would generally come next. This is a function typically handled by prepress, but we should recognize that some DFEs contain imposition capabilities. In either case, prepping a 1up PDF or integrating an imposition solution should both be part of an automated workflow. How is this part of quality? In consistency, repeatability and accuracy is where the human element can waver.
After files are printed, they need to get through finishing. Finishing can be controlled by JDF generated during imposition. Automating the setup of bindery equipment and providing a final job specs vs printed sheets comparison before committing to a deliverable product is where to focus. Lastly, we have some file management to deal with. There is job archival, notification emails, shipping instructions, front end systems to update, and the list goes on. Passing around files and status notifications without the opportunity for human error is lastly, but not leastly one more valuable, integral part of the quality-automation relationship.
All of this is well and good and it seems like a bit of stating the obvious. If it were so obvious, then more printers would be embracing quality and automation as a single unit. How can they make it happen? If quality is the bride and automation is the groom, then Enfocus is the officiant. PitStop Server delivers PDF quality control and Switch is the platform for automation. This quality- automation couple don’t require you have any specific vendor solutions. You automate your workflow, your way. Enfocus software unifies your print shop and allows you to keep playing by your own rules. Enfocus develops software for you to build winning print services.
Xwww.enfocus.com
34
April 2022
www.convertermag.com
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