April 2015
Elopak Adopts AVT's SpectraLab Color Management Workflow Solution
AVT's on-press module assures inline color measurement and process control for color consistency and repeatability
Elopak, one of the world's largest manufacturers of folding carton packaging for liquid food products, has partnered with AVT - the world leader in print inspection, print process control, and quality assurance - to add AVT's SpectraLab on-press module to its quality control process in Terneuzen, The Netherlands, following previous installations at Elopak plants in Germany and Denmark. An add-on to AVT's 100% inspection systems, SpectraLab assures inline color measurement for color consistency and repeatability.
SpectraLab measures absolute L*a*b* (lab color space), density, and dot gain measurement. The system ensures consistent color printing all along the print run according to a brand owner's original colors. The on-press module supports the highest production speeds and measures color on a wide variety of substrates, including paper, carton products such as paperboard, and flexible materials.
For Elopak, the combination of SpectraLab's accuracy, speed and efficiencies made it a particularly attractive quality control option. The company manufactures an enormous number of cartons - over 13 billion per year - for a diverse portfolio of brand owners around the world. This being the case, Elopak's day-to-day operations entail frequent job changes and, often, design changes within individual jobs. Make-ready procedures need to be fast and accurate, and colors must precisely match those defined by brand owner graphics. Not only must colors be tightly consistent within print runs, but also repeatable between jobs and repeat runs. And across all of these requirements is a need for speed: Elopak's product quotas demand its presses run at high production speeds while staying true to the color schemes and overall quality standards of its diverse customer set.
Meeting this need for tight quality control at high speeds, AVT's SpectraLab ensures print runs "by the numbers," meaning it continuously monitors ink densities to verify that presses are printing within prescribed tolerances. Along with the module's other benefits, this color make ready support feature saves time and potentially costly press stops. The system also includes enhanced color reporting capabilities, and immediately alerts operators when colors shift out of tolerance. SpectraLab supports any common file standards and communicates easily with third-party reporting systems and databases.
At Elopak, implementation of AVT's SpectraLab solution included a period of evaluation as well as specific adaptations made for Elopak's particular needs and workflow protocol.
Maurice Wierckx, Process Improvement Engineer for Elopak said: "The changes that AVT made in getting SpectraLab to fit into our daily production processes have been very well received, and its close collaboration throughout the implementation and evaluation process displayed a true customer partnership. The semi-automated colorbar enables the operator to set up the system in a very short time without any loss on job make-ready. By adding SpectraLab's database into our Business Intelligence Dashboards, which are used in our daily production meetings, we are able to monitor and detect any changes that may occur in our printing colors and solve them before unacceptable deviations are printed."
Continued Wierckx: "SpectraLab contributes in continuously improving print quality, and helps us better understand our processes. Overall, the system has proven itself worthy of enrollment on our presses in various other manufacturing locations."
Guy Yogev, Marketing Director for the packaging market at AVT, said: "We are proud to support a company as highly regarded as Elopak in meeting its needs for inline color measurement, consistency and repeatability. We continue to serve forward-thinking companies with exceedingly strict standards for quality assurance and overall process control, while maintaining high production speeds."
