Closing the Loop on Color

California Offset Printers (COP) has gotten used to staying a step ahead of its competition, but with its new on-press color measurement system from Graphics Microsystems, Inc., that step appears to be widening into a giant leap.

In this era of tough competition, printers must strive for win-win solutions benefiting themselves and their customers. With its new on-press capability, COP consistently produces a product characterized by higher quality, faster makeready, and less waste, all attributes that delight its customers.

California Offset Printers, founded in 1963, is based in Glendale, a few miles northeast of Los Angeles. It was known for many years as a leader in the production of advertising circulars and newspapers; for example, in 1984, it printed all of the "Official Olympic Event Guides," which it delivered each day to venues in the Southern California area.

COP continues to provide this standard of service to event planners.

Since 1996, under the new ownership and leadership of William R. Rittwage, president and chief executive, California Offset Printers has emerged as the premier regional producer of magazines, catalogs, event guides, directories, and new media. In all, it prints more than 120 regularly scheduled publications.

Says Rittwage, "Our company philosophy is simple: provide solutions, satisfy customers, and eliminate waste." The goal of the company, he adds, is to provide technology-driven services to its customers in a cost-efficient manner.

What are technology-driven services? Just ask Ugo DiLullo, the company's pressroom manager.

"For the past 18 months we've been using ColorQuick closed-loop color control from Graphics Microsystems on our five-unit commercial heatset web press," explains DiLullo. COP, a 'round-the-clock operation, produces a mix of jobs that range from 25,000 to 250,000 copies, including the daily run of the show-biz fave Variety.

"With turnaround times as tight as they are [a mere 12 hours for Variety]," says DiLullo, "optimizing efficiency is the name of the game when it comes to both pleasing the customer and increasing our bottom line."

To increase efficiency and widen profit margins, DiLullo adds, COP had to trim its makeready times by up to 15%. At the same time, the company needed to enhance and streamline production, to satisfy the demand for high quality and quick turnaround.

To meet this two-part challenge, California Offset Printers turned to Graphics Microsystems. GMI provided COP with a CIP3 file interpreter to feed customer artwork directly into its new Goss G18 press equipped with a state-of-the-art Microcolor remote ink control system, and spectrophotometric closed-loop color control via the ColorQuick system.

The GMI solution helped California Offset Printers squeeze 5% to 7% more from its production runs each week.

Such productivity increases have been recorded by the same press crews that not long ago finessed, cajoled, or arm-wrestled the color into place. "Our press operators have always been real craftsmen in manually controlling color," says DiLullo, "but the GMI system frees them up to monitor other variables like fit, folds, cutoff, and marking."

He adds, "The operators enjoy having closed-loop color control. In fact, this system allows less-experienced operators to perform at close to the same level as experienced operators." DiLullo says COP is now able to perform "near-surgical" application of technical dial-ins for target densities for each key for every inker.

And what about customer satisfaction with closed-loop color control? Reports DiLullo, "Customers tell me they're pleased with our consistent quality—and if they're happy, I'm happy. The clarity and depth of color on a typical issue of Variety is really striking."