Most of the people believe that the commercial printer is like the office photocopier. One press print to make 100 copies, and out comes 100 identical and perfect copies.
The expectation is same when printing 500,000 Aspirin labels, potato chip bags, or cookie cartons, but is this true? Are commercial printers are
Let’s look at the question of liability:
What if the printed components are distributed to the production facility and everything is filled, packaged and shipped to all the warehouses in the country?
“How did the text copy I wrote change in the printer’s proof?”
After a few days, the brand company gets very upset with the printer if the barcode is not present on all the cartons!
Even if the brand company settles with printer without paying for the printing, that reflects only about 5% of the total distributed cost of the product standing on the store shelf. This shows a huge loss that includes the production cost, the cost of the contents, the cost of collecting and destroying the defective product, the cost of distribution, and eventually the cost to rerun the production again.
If the Quality Control (QC) department at the printer or the production firm or the brand company would have ensured the quality of printing, everyone could have saved time, money and environmental impact.
The print job has become a huge liability that the brand company assumed was easy as printing on a photocopier.
It is necessary to find whose fault it is? Then only the losses can be recovered. But even by saving the cost of the print job, the brand company is still at risk for the loss to its supply chain and consumers. What if the customer dies or gets injured die to the printing error? It won’t be the printer who is liable.
The given below list features the most common print errors:
> The colours are wrong
> Missing logo
> One of the ink colors is faded
> The barcode is missing/wrong
> Spelling mistakes
> The right label on the wrong package
> Blurry text
> Smears, ink splatter, smudges
> The position of print is off
> Cut-off section
> An older version is printed
> Folded wrong
The brand company can avoid these errors by simply proofreading and it can help to verify shipments from the printer. Considering printers as being one step eliminated from photocopiers is a misinterpretation. In fact, it is very complicated, and, yet, anticipations of pristine packaging on the part of consumers remain a very real thing.
To get the job done, various touchpoints along the workflow are required, but they also raise the risk of conversion errors, while manual proofreading is the only suitable option for catching so many mistakes before fatigue and human error sets in.
There is one logical solution called digital proofreading, which maximizes cost-effectiveness as it relates to quality control, resulting in a less-strained relations among brand companies, printers, and their consumers.
Packaging 360 is a comprehensive knowledge sharing ecosystem for the Indian packaging industry. Our services include an online content platform to deliver news, insights and case studies; organising conferences seminars and customised training; Providing Bespoke Project Consulting, Market Research and Intelligence.
