Marc Levine, director of enterprise print quality at Schawk, will be speaking at the drupa 2016 QuadTech Print Performance Speaker Series (Hall 15, Stand D50, Düsseldorf, Germany, May 31-June 10). In his presentation, “Building Quality-Focused Partnerships with Your Supply Chain”, Marc will address how Schawk’s print quality management system, ColorDrive, can help amplify brand consistency efforts by using color data, enhancing color decisions, and by leveraging your team. 

ColorDrive is the industry’s first and only, cloud-based, open platform for managing print quality. Through its comprehensive on-line reporting tools, all stakeholders gain visibility and access to the right information to monitor print quality, and analyze printer performance to make key partner decisions and process improvements.

“An open platform is the heart of a sustainable print quality platform. Open platforms allow brands and print suppliers to equip themselves with the quality control tools that best fit their needs…and to implement new technologies on the fly without breaking print quality continuity. Maintaining program continuity means both the brand and it’s suppliers can depend on the program, fortify it, and evolve it over time to as new technologies and best practices emerge,” says Marc Levine.

Any time a brand adds a new supplier, and moves work from one supplier to another, there is a risk that the package will look different. While many brands do actively manage some aspects of the package (the color of a single ink, for example), there is often a gap between the metrics and the true impact on the design intent.

By building quality-focused partnerships with your supply chain, and by using more comprehensive metrics incorporated into a program, brands can empower suppliers to better match design intent -- giving brands more flexibility in managing their print supplier base. This gives print suppliers a clear set of guidelines for acceptable print.