Print Production Planning and Quality Control
Print Production Planning and Quality Control covers how a job is specified, costed, scheduled and verified.
What the exam tests
Expect job tickets, estimating, waste, colour standards and inspection tools.
Core rules
- A job ticket records customer, quantity, size, substrate, colours, finishing, delivery and approval. It is the single reference for every department.
- Estimating: paper cost = sheet area × GSM × price per kg, or use a house sheet-rate; add ink, plates, press time, finishing, waste and margin. A gang run combines jobs on one sheet to share make-ready.
- Scheduling respects press capacity, drying/curing time, binding sequence and delivery. Make-ready waste is expected and must be costed.
- Colour management uses ICC profiles to keep colour predictable across devices. ISO 12647 defines process-colour aims for offset; a colour bar carries solids, tints, overprints and registration patches.
- QC tools: densitometer (ink density), spectrophotometer (CIE Lab*), plate reader, glossmeter, colour light booth. Statistical process control plots measurements against control limits rather than reacting to one sheet.
- Proofs: soft proof on a calibrated monitor, hard proof on the actual stock, and contract proof for approval.
Worked example
A 5,000-sheet job uses 70 × 100 cm sheets at 100 GSM. One sheet weighs 0.7 × 1.0 × 100 = 70 g. For 5,000 sheets: 350 kg. Add 5% make-ready and spoilage = 367.5 kg. If paper costs ₹70/kg, paper cost is ₹25,725. Reasoning: convert dimensions to metres, multiply by GSM to get grams per sheet, scale by quantity, then add waste before pricing.
Traps
Pricing only ink and paper; forgetting make-ready and finishing; treating the first sheet as the approved standard; using a densitometer to judge hue (it measures density, not colour); accepting a proof viewed under office lighting.