1. B
eing at the forefront of technology
innovation brings its own pressures.
At CS Labels in Willenhall, near
Wolverhampton, innovation is seen
as a point of differentiation, and that
spirit saw it become a beta site for Xeikon’s
new 30 metres per minute Cheetah press in
March. It is, says managing director Simon
Smith, 58% faster than other Xeikon presses
(CS Labels is the largest reel-fed Xeikon house
in Europe with five machines). Therein lay the
issue however.
‘While we were putting the press in, we
also had to consider what we were doing in
terms of streamlining studio processes to get
the work through more efficiently. We were
using a preflighting system but it wasn’t giving
us the savings we were hoping for,’ he told
Digital Printer.
The company had met MyPressXpert sales
director Kevin Caughtry at an EasyFairs event in
February, and then spoke to Niall Coady from
the colour calibration firm shortly afterwards
at a Xeikon Café. In talking, it was recognised
that there could be ways to simplify and
improve the workflow at CS Labels and
reduce errors in prepress.
Initially, Mr Coady worked on developing a
customised, simplified report for the CS
Labels sales team that showed the ink con-
sumption required for a file received, allowing
them to quote accurately on the job. It would
also preflight the file and report on any fixes
that needed to be made, allowing this to be
done by the customer before it took up stu-
dio time. A second, more detailed, report
and client proof PDF is also produced for the
studio. This was all achieved to CS Labels’
satisfaction using callas pdfToolbox Server
and pdfChip software (HTML5, CSS and
Javascript technologies used to automate
client proof creation) alongside Filetrain, a
workflow management system from
Laidback Solutions.
Following this, MyPressXpert has undertaken
further bespoke project work for CS Labels,
creating a brand new job management system
for the Xeikon workflow from scratch, which
interrogates an Excel (.xlsx) file from the client
and automatically creates and databases all
the label barcodes based on sites and quanti-
ties. It has also put in a colour management
software system – ColorLogic’s ZePra colour
management server and ReProfiler Digital
colour engine – which is helping to improve
CS Labels’ management of process control
and calibration of the Xeikon engines, provid-
ing detailed reporting on the stability of the
presses so that maintenance schedules can be
optimised. This has been effective to such a
degree that in September the label producer
stopped using the colour control system that
comes with the Xeikon presses.
‘All digital presses face the challenge of
colour consistency from print run to print run,
and we also need to ensure that our presses
are optimised to achieve Pantone colours,’
said Mr Smith. ‘Invariably we are given a label
to match by printing CMYK. We need to get as
close as possible to achieving the Pantones
consistently and measure how close in Delta E
we are. This system has helped us to do that.
We are of the opinion that it actually takes it to
a different level.’
The impact of these implementations of
automated preflighting and colour manage-
ment within the company is that CS Labels is
able to cope with higher volumes of work
while utilising the same level of human
resources. ‘We are also shortening lead times
to get work on press and we are getting far
fewer mistakes where files have to go back to
the studio,’ Mr Smith continued. ‘It has stream-
lined the whole process for us and allows the
studio to move away from more mundane
tasks such as putting the bleed on a hundred
files – those things are automated now. The
system also automates the artwork and sends
a proof back to the customer.
‘The ideal is that we get a PDF from our
customer and it goes straight on press with-
out a human touching it. That’s what we are
looking for, and we are making fairly
substantial progress.’
All progress in this direction is welcome,
because in December a second Cheetah
press will arrive, and further efficiencies will
need to be found.
‘This has been a steep learning curve but a
very worthwhile process,’ Mr Smith conclud-
ed. ‘The biggest benefit is that we have been
able to make this system bespoke to our
unique requirements, rather than buying one
off the shelf.’ n
When it became the beta site for Xeikon’s latest high speed web press, CS Labels
knew it needed to up the pace in prepress too. It turned to MyPressXpert to find
a way with software.
Software54
www.digitalprintermag.co.uk
Xpert intervention
November 2015
CS Labels’ managing director Simon Smith: ‘This has been a steep learning curve but a
very worthwhile process.’
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