Grafika, a leading industrial print manufacturer, has built its reputation on delivering high-quality printing while minimizing waste. Our commitment to excellence is evident in our approach to performance optimization and data-driven decision-making. However, as our operations grew, we recognized the limitations of our manual tracking methods, which included spreadsheets and dry-erase boards for quality assurance checks in plating and proofing.

Grafika’s Transformation with ChromaChecker

Challenge

With increasing demands for efficiency and accuracy, we needed a more advanced and efficient solution to manage our color processes that make the entire  organization aware. The primary challenge was to find a system that provided centralized visibility and management, enabling our entire team to access and act on critical data from a centralized platform.

Solution

After extensive research, we chose ChromaChecker for its comprehensive tracking capabilities, production tools, and user-friendly interface. The decision was straightforward for our executive team, who was immediately impressed by the platform’s ability to support the vision for customer satisfaction, strong metric-driven decisions, and organizational success. “This implementation is directly supporting the Grafika brand for quality,” said Michael Hartman - Color Manager Grafika Printing.

Implementation

Implementing ChromaChecker has been a transformative experience for Grafika. The platform’s extensive features have significantly enhanced our operational efficiency and data management capabilities. Below are the key features and unexpected benefits that have proven invaluable to our goals:

Key Features

• Color Measurements and Data Analysis: ChromaChecker provides detailed LAB values and overprint data, which are essential for our comprehensive analysis. The Jobs Track feature, in particular, offers thorough reports that are invaluable for evaluating performance.
• Graphical Displays: Unlike other systems, ChromaChecker offers superior graphical displays that help us refine our processes. We still will use some of these tools but they are proprietary and costly making them limited for the organizational goals.
• Maintenance Tracking: The ability to document and track maintenance events, including roller maintenance, is critical for our operations. We can track all events that relate to maintenance and fixes to real issues. This becomes valuable for everyone when troubleshooting future production issues.
• Tracking Fountain Solution: This feature is crucial for maintaining consistency in our printing processes, ensuring that we adhere to the highest quality standards. It provides operators and management with the monitoring of a critical variable with color consistency on press.
• Versatility: We use ChromaChecker across various departments, including conventional Offset,  Flexo and digital.

Unexpected Benefits

• Cost Savings: The Instrument Inspector justified the system with hard cost savings. The feature allows us to baseline instruments, eliminating the need to remove instruments from production and ship them to the manufacturer for verification. It’s a 3-minute check monthly ensuring the instrument is verified. 
• Color Inspector: The Color Match functionality provides quick checks and financial savings. We retired ColorCert, saving thousands of dollars annually as we no longer need multiple licenses.
• Proactive Quality Control: Importing measurements from production for post-process analysis is a step towards consistently producing high-quality sheets.
• Project Management: Entering brand colors and tracking measurements in jobs, such as a quick audit of reading sheets from 100 skids and logging the data, allows us to capture timelines and ensure quality. This analysis can be completed quickly and shared in KPI Reports. Print buyers can see how well we manage the product, instilling confidence.
• Quality Control: The ChromaChecker Dashboard is used by employees, operators, managers, and executives throughout the plant to ensure everything is within spec. The E-Factor metric helps involve the entire organization in quality control, making us proud of our efforts.

Support and Training

The support provided by ChromaChecker has been exceptional. Attending the ChromaChecker Color Quality Conference 2024 was extremely valuable, offering resources and expertise in color management. It provided 3 days of learning alongside other professionals and customers, making it a worthwhile and affordable investment. The timing of the conference was perfect for our implementation as I had completed the initial onboarding and was ready to perform analysis and extend to additional use cases throughout the organization.

ChromaChecker’s responsive support team and developers have continually advanced the product, ensuring it meets our evolving needs. Their high level of expertise was crucial during the initial stages of onboarding and addressing our questions, which made the process much smoother. 

Conclusion

Comparing ChromaChecker to other tools we evaluated, it became clear that no other solution addressed our needs as comprehensively. We found them to be limited and lacked the comprehensive tracking and quality management that ChromaChecker offers. Its ability to track variables and ensure quality with one application made it the clear choice for us.

Michael Hartman
Color Manager Grafika Printing