Munish Aggarwal of Janus to speak about colour standards at Print Summit

The Process Standard Offsetdruck (PSO) certification to ISO 12647-2 under Ugra’s auspices has fuelled Janus' export ambitions and served a corporate audience.

Munish Aggarwal is a happy man: “Our commitment to standard systems and value-driven process and management have reached a desired level.”

The company has infused capital investment amounting to Rs 12-cr in 2010 in addition to its earlier investment of Rs 30-cr for its Baddi plant. It achieved a 172.41% increase in profit in the last 12 months.

The UGRA process at Janus
Ugra PSO is believed to be the highest recognised PSO Certification in offset printing for a printer. It is a significant achievement. “We are confident. We can measure and prove our print quality at par with international standards. We are among 60 PSO certified printers worldwide and one of the 15 in Asia,” says Aggarwal. He adds: “We believe there will be greater focus on print quality in India.”

The implementation has been a team effort. It has been hard work which looks like it has paid off. Tarun Chopra, Indian consultant for Ugra while lauding Janus’ efforts, says: “They shut down the plant and stopped work for two days to facilitate the proceedings with the evaluation process.”

Satish Nayak and Tarun Chopra, the Ugra certified experts (UCE), say: “Ugra PSO is about quantification with standards. This is a rigorous certification process. Though the path chosen by Janus was difficult, they wanted every process to be quantified with standards and achieve the checks and balance points with the best hardware available.”

“It is difficult to implement ISO standards on the press. We initiated the process nine months ago. We had to make special arrangements for the process. We started the soft proofing by setting up the Quato monitor and light booth, and then we set up the IC plate to take readings of the exposed plates and the setting of Intellitrax,” points out Aggarwal.

Nayak explains that a new assessment for proofs has become necessary. This includes the proof assessment as described in ISO 12647-7.

Quality attitude
The Janus management with Yashpal Aggarwal, chairman and Munish Aggarwal are clear about their aim – to be known as an industry accredited and standardised printer, “The Indian print industry has to have standard norms. There has to be a wholesome, all-inclusive culture to implement stringent standards.”

“We had to educate our team that the Process Standard Offset (PSO) is a method or standardised procedure for creation of a print product. We had to ensure everyone realises that the implementation of PSO assures good quality print production from data creation to the final print production. In PSO, testing devices and control methods are described with which the production process can be controlled,” explains Aggarwal.

Guy Flueli adds: “Post Ugra PSO implementation, the printer is ultimately the winner with savings. The more he prints, the more he saves. The impact of this can be evaluated by the gains in resource savings in the form of consumable usage, energy consumption and final product output.”

PSO de-mystified
Briefing the PrintWeek India team, Erwin Widmer, managing director, Ugra, explains: “PSO is a standardised working mode based on ISO standards from the incoming data until the printed product. All steps have prescribed values and tolerances, which are described in SOPs (written procedures). All steps are controlled. All measurements are documented for a retraceable production. All measuring devices are maintained and calibrated.”

What then is the eligibility criterion for a company to opt for Ugra certification?

Aggarwal answers: “The production process has to be standardised according to ISO standards. The production process has to be described. The measuring devises have to be maintained. The target values of the ISO standard have to be achieved within the tolerances in a normal mode.”

Widmer elaborates: “The Ugra PSO production mode certifies a process, which is able to fulfil the ISO standards. The Ugra PSO certification is based on different ISO standards like: ISO 15930 (PDF/X), ISO 15076 (colour management), ISO 12646 (display), ISO 12647-7 (digital proof), ISO 12647-2 (printing) and ISO 3664 (standard illumination).

Widmer is confident when he says, “I see a huge demand for Indian printers who aspire to be as good as their counterparts in Europe. Now, they can achieve this with a PSO certification. We expect 10% of the printing companies in India will opt for the Ugra PSO certification.”

Aggarwal adds: “There is slight difference with category of printer. Offset and packaging printer have a similar process but there is different process standardisation for the digital printer.”

An audit process involves one day of pre-audit and one day of final audit. After which, the certification is valid for two years. The main thing is, certification can be re-judged if someone complains to the Ugra body about the poor quality produced, discloses Aggarwal.

There is a base fee for Ugra certification. There is additional cost for consultation to facilitate the process. The hardware cost is not a part of the process, add UCE’s Nayak and Chopra.

Rigorous certification process

All the steps have prescribes values and tolerances which are described in the SOPs