ColorDrive Print Quality Management Platform

Marc Levine, print quality group manager at Schawk, Inc. notes, “Technically, one of the key characteristics that sets this product apart from others is its print quality scoring. ColorDrive ingests the data points most important to a particular brand and company and uses the information to create a print quality score with one number. This dramatically simplifies process management and sets clear guidelines for quality improvement. A high score means that the printer printed closely to the brand’s standards; variability measures have more meaning and continuous improvement plans have greater focus. Quality control just works better. An increased confidence in performance measures and responsiveness to variation translates into faster time-to-market with higher quality and lower overall production costs.”

Stephen Kaufman, chief technology officer at Schawk, Inc. added, “ColorDrive also differentiates itself in the marketplace because it’s been developed by a company—Schawk—that actually creates packaging deliverables. While the ColorDrive platform combines software and services, and does not require that Schawk be the premedia partner, we applied more than 50 years of technical knowledge about color management and packaging to the process of developing the product. Our deep insights into the brand challenges that consumer products companies face everyday in developing and deploying their brands around the world was invaluable in identifying a gap in the marketplace for a product like this. ColorDrive helps put print quality management back into the hands of brand owners with confidence.”

ColorDrive collects and reports data from a variety of commercially available quality control tools. For a completely integrated quality control client, Schawk selected MeasureColor as its development partner. MeasureColor is a proven solution for quality control on press, giving the ColorDrive print supplier a host of tools to help them manage their internal quality control process. MeasureColor supports a wide array of color measurement devices, helping printers leverage their measurement investment, and provides a true client-server architecture that can scale from one to many locations. It also provides bold graphical feedback that instantly advises the printer on performance. With the ColorDrive client module, MeasureColor lets printers know exactly how they are "scoring" on their brand work.

ColorDrive is currently in use at several Fortune 250 consumer products companies. Some of the benefits that ColorDrive is capable of delivering to packaging supply chain partners include:

• Improved shelf impact, brand recognition and speed to market

• Ease of deployment, low cost of ownership and faster response time

• Better end product, design integrity retained, confidence in continuous improvement efforts

• Confidence in supplier deliverability reduces waste and cost

• Reduced waste of substrates, inks, and energy

• Consistent proof of performance, the ability of printers to confidently identify opportunities to improve internal processes

At this time, the product is also in use at 15 packaging printers in 30 locations to manage the print quality of the packaging for more than 35 brands in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific.