SpotOn! Software Used at National Fabric Chain

Jo-Ann Stores Inc., a large specialty retailer of fabrics, recently installed SpotOn! Press’ SpotOn!, a software tool that provides a visual dashboard of press conditions, enabling printers to fully realize the benefits of standardization and process control in the press room, in accordance with GRACoL and SWOP specifications.

Jo-Ann Stores uses SpotOn! to track press conditions, allowing them to continuously fine-tune their printing process, improving efficiency and color accuracy of their print.

“We had been struggling for some time trying to profile our presses, and we knew there was a problem but we couldn’t put our finger on it. We [typically] are printing 160 to 230 different versions of materials at varying quantities and colors. We used SpotOn! and immediately could tell which press unit was the problem,” said Jo-Ann Stores representative Gregg Seifert.

“For a company that has multiple crews and does a great deal of reprints, SpotOn! considerably improves color accuracy between shifts, between presses and over time. SpotOn! helps Jo-Ann Stores obtain business goals by improving color consistency which improves store image and makes them look more appealing to their customers. SpotOn! helps pressmen to hit gray balance on press and meet G7 specifications, whether they have a strong color background or not,” said founder and president of SpotOn! Press Bruce Bayne.

SpotOn! displays how a press or proofer performs to the ISO 12647-2 standard for inks and overprints, along with the G7 Neutral Print Density Curve and gray balance. Users run an i1 scanning spectrophotometer over the color control strip and SpotOn! automatically generates easy-to-read graphs and tables arranged in a ‘dashboard’ style layout. The technology filters jobs by job number, job name, customer, press, operator, paper name, paper grade, paper finish, run length and even custom data.

Using this filtered data, trend charts are generated showing variance from the ISO standard, Neutral Print Density Curve deviation, gray balance deviation, Density to DeltaE trends, and Density to NPDC and TVI trends. The Density to DeltaE trend graphs indicate how close to the ISO 12647-2 standard the press is performing and what solid ink density is necessary to keep the inks and overprints within specification.