FLEXO: Printers polled cite their plants’ priorities as maximizing efficiencies, establishing best practices and process controls, and monitoring/maximizing and maintaining overall equipment effectiveness. What tips will they glean in support of these goals? How can they put the messages conveyed to work for them?
BOURQUIN & MARSOUN: Most printers like to collect and report data that best fits in their ecosystems. Brand owners also have their way of monitoring what is received from their suppliers, which can often deviate significantly from each other. This session will highlight the advantages of implementing, partnering or upgrading a solution that supports PQX as a way to ensure they can monitor/maximize overall equipment effectiveness, while not having to worry about converting and relaying data different for every customer platform.
McLEOD & OETJEN: “Welcome to Our Pressroom” will help you improve press uptime and overall print quality by optimizing ink transfer on various materials with an in-depth look at surface energy management, new plate technologies and prepress tools; therefore making it possible to reduce makeready time and waste, while improving overall print stability during the run.
HAYNES & ROGERS: Effective troubleshooting is rooted in the adoption of best practices and effective process control. But let’s be real, even the best laid plans can go off the rail. We will face these realities head-on by discussing practices, procedures and resources needed to deal with inevitable stresses.
BLACKBURN & ANDERSON: With the trajectory we are on now, it’s hard to fathom what we will experience and be talking about two years—or even five years—from now. Although we are riding a spaceship without brakes, it is good to know that the decisions and drivers for change are to ensure our legacy as an industry; and as leaders of change are for a greater good.
URESS & SMILEY: CxF technology empowers printers to gain efficiency and maintain quality by meeting the customer expectation on the first run and every run. This technology can be used throughout the workflow and our presentations will highlight the application of CxF in each step, from design to shelf.
ENGELKE & RICCARDELLA: Research is being conducted to determine whether anilox volume and plate screening will allow printers to combine line and process plates to possibly reduce ink costs and reduce changeover times in press units. The outcome of this research would allow printers to evaluate their production practices to take advantage of plate screening technology to affect their production costs.
DEDMAN & RAHMEH: The information we’ve asked our presenters to provide will give the printers in the audience the foundational knowledge to establish best practices and process controls in their own operations, allowing them to maximize efficiency, and maintain productivity and profitability, using their own equipment.
CONGDON & GASQUE: Most printers are familiar with the optimization process, but as the need for speed increases, the relationship between the many variables of flexography changes. For instance, if you are running high speed, then the dry rate of the inks needs to be adjusted to make sure the ink stays wet enough on the plate, while drying quickly on the substrate. The ink change might then require a change in the anilox volume or plate screening in order to achieve color targets. Reoptimizing the process for the new speed and ink is required to achieve maximum efficiency on press.
FLEXO: By and large, every printer’s efficiency improvement plan hinges on reducing waste, enhancing productivity and trimming costs. What role will these topics have in any/all presentations and how will the agenda support those strategies?
BOURQUIN & MARSOUN: It goes without saying—actually understanding and having customers’ clear expectations communicated on the front end is a beneficial practice… A novel concept! “Print Quality eXchange and the Print Score Card” will address the innerworkings of a standard and how this is easily done across a software provider, a solution architect and a printer. Knowing what, how, where and when to measure will lead to faster makeready, less waste and more sellable product.
TEUFLER & MULHERAN: These objectives are always part of a sound anilox selection and implementation strategy.
McLEOD & OETJEN: Less makeready will lead to more uptime and throughput, and this is critical as we near full capacity. We need to get on color quicker and maintain stability during the run to maximize uptime and minimize waste.
HAYNES & ROGERS: We all know that expectation and reality often seem far apart when we badly need them to align in the pressroom. Leadership is focused on fast turnaround and getting the next job on press—the bottom-line issues. Operators are concerned with the mechanics of the process, setup speed and minute-to-minute production issues. “How Do I Fix This?” will look at how you can balance expectations in the real world and potential solutions for more efficient operation to avoid problems in the first place.
URESS & SMILEY: The most effective way to reduce waste is to eliminate rework as much as possible. Software solutions that utilize CxF technology can ensure everyone is measuring to the same and most current revision of the customer’s color expectation. By demonstrating how the same CxF file can travel the entire production process, our presentation will highlight the places where printers might not be using it already and how to adopt it into those segments of the workflow.
ENGELKE & RICCARDELLA: An FQC project report on plate life indicator variables seeks to identify measurable plate variables that will help printers improve the efficiency of their operations by identifying whether a plate will perform as desired, before it is mounted and put into the press. This will reduce waste and downtime by moving the decision point upstream before production is affected. It will also increase the efficiency of the prepress process to quickly determine whether a plate needs to be remade prior to mounting, saving time and money.
DEDMAN & RAHMEH: Consider your current print operations—How much time are you spending daily fighting color, density and quality issues? How much wasted time, materials and manpower are you spending trying to correct those issues without truly understanding the root causes and how to prevent them? “It’s Always the Ink’s Fault” will directly address those root causes and offer you simple ways to correct them.
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