Chicago – Leading web-to-print provider PrintPlace.com won a ISO 12647 Standards Gap Analysis Audit at GraphExpo 2010. The company scooped the prize after entering a draw at the IDEAlliance G7 Summit. The competition was run by KEE Consultants and sponsored by Alwan Color Expertise.

PrintPlace.com has aligned its presswork with ISO 12647-2-based printing specifications since its inception in 2006. While many of PrintPlace.com's customers are unfamiliar with terms such as PSO, G7, ISO 12647, Gracol and Fogra, the far-sighted company understands that implementing best practices in print reproduction serve the interests of everyone involved in the print procurement chain.

With more and more printers joining the standards initiative, print buyers are benefitting from the common appearance of pages, regardless of their chosen print providers.

Matt Louis, G7 Expert and Color Assurance Manager at PrintPlace.com, comments: "Printing has been priced as a commodity for the past decade. But the way we manufacture print also had to become a commodity to enable automation and scalability.

"We produce thousands of pages per day, and understand what every page should look like in terms of CIElab and process control aim points, without having to visually inspect the printed images. We are very excited to have won the KEE Gap Analysis Audit – we're looking forward to getting expert advice on how we can improve our operation."

Elie Khoury, founder and chair of KEE Consultants, says: "We're very keen to be introducing our Gap Analysis Audit to North American printers. The audit will support the Printing Standards Audit (PSA) certification initiative, which is led in the USA by IDEAlliance and the Rochester Institute of Technology.

"It's very important for American printers that want to print to international standards to prepare themselves for the upcoming PSA certification. KEE Consultants' Gap Analysis Audit is the most cost-effective way to begin this preparation work."