Vendor Qualification

A vital part of brand point management is working closely with printers to manage a client’s brand and color standards on press. Schawk has developed strong relationships with most of the world’s largest printers over our 50-plus-year history. And these relationships combine with our knowledge and expertise in color, printing processes, premedia and production to give us exceptional insight into the capabilities of printers and press characteristics.

This allows Schawk to evaluate printers and perform vendor qualification exercises to ensure that our clients’ brand imagery meets the absolute highest quality standards when reproduced.

This is particularly important for packaging in emerging markets like China and India. Schawk’s ability to evaluate printers to determine baseline capabilities in production, quality and communication pays many benefits. We have developed a model that allows us to quickly and cost-efficiently determine whether it’s worth investing time and money in developing printers in these markets.

Schawk’s vendor-qualification program has four key phases: press characterization, testing, evaluation and ongoing quality management.

In analyzing a press and documenting its unique characteristics, Schawk develops a customized certification plan based directly on our analysis. A printing test is then performed, The goal of this test is not to see how the printer can produce the form. The goal is to capture a realistic assessment of the printer’s production quality.

By evaluating the fingerprint test results, Schawk gains reproduction data that forms the basis of the printer’s individual reproduction specifications. If the results fall within accepted industry ranges for density, dot gain and registration, we use the information to create a customized reproduction profile for that printer. This profile allows Schawk to customize color separations and proofs to the specific requirements of the printer. The resulting data also provides us with critical reference information upon which reproduction specifications will be based.

Schawk also works with printers and clients to define how quality will be measured and, more importantly, how quality will be communicated. Once the baseline production capability of a printer is certified, our emphasis switches to developing documented, mutually acceptable procedures for monitoring quality and resolving production issues. In addition to training and instrumentation, Schawk introduces practices that the printer is required to follow on each press run. This approach allows Schawk to monitor print quality without attending every press run. Schawk then continues to support the printers from a technical standpoint and attends critical press runs as required by clients.