Postpress certified: pioneering role for Onlineprinters

Postpress certified for the first time

In addition to offset print quality, this year’s audit also focused on postpress operations for the first time, scrutinising individual postpress steps from folding, cutting, punching and stitching to the final product ready for shipping. The quality expert also examined the work of the employees directly in the production halls. "For example, I look at how diligently the employees prepare the individual work steps," says Armin Schörghofer, who showed himself impressed by the smart solutions for individual process steps. Dr Michael Fries, CEO of Onlineprinters, comments: "Online printing is a relatively young industry. We produce customised products on an industrial scale – this only works with efficient processes and high standards. Having our roots in a conventional print shop, we understand the needs of other printing companies and resellers who are our customers. Quality and process stability are priorities for them, of course in finishing, too."

Standardisation from the very beginning

Thomas M. Schnitzler, co-auditor and external quality specialist, has assisted the company in complying with uniform manufacturing process standards since 2006. "Onlineprinters has addressed standardisation issues from very early on. This is paying off today," says Thomas M. Schnitzler; together with members from the company, he prepared the audit of the postpress operations based on current Viscom guidelines for print media processing and ISO 16762.

The PSO print audit covered all processes from data acquisition to proof printing, CtP printing plate creation and the final print result. Again, the special focus was on the print quality in order to continue to be able to deliver customers reproducible colour quality, e.g. when reordering the same product.

About the company

The Onlineprinters group is one of Europe’s leading online printers. True to the motto "Print simply online", the group delivers printed products to 700,000 customers in 30 European countries through its 17 web shops. Internationally, the online print provider is known under the brand name of Onlineprinters, in Germany it operates as diedruckerei.de Solopress, one of the leading online print firms in the UK, is also part of the Onlineprinters group. The product assortment comprises 1,500 printed products from business cards, stationery and flyers to catalogues, brochures and large-format advertising systems. Onlineprinters produces customized products on an industrial scale: The company’s pillars of success are online sales, IT-based production and "combined run printing". The latter uses so-called combined blocks to collectively produce print jobs to minimize costs and reduce the environmental impact. The Onlineprinters group has more than 900 employees and produced over 2.5 billion printed products last year.

Video clip: "Cutting, folding, stapling – processing of printings" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfvo979qSkQ