For almost five decades Coburn Carton Solutions has steadily grown to provide the finest packaging to some of the world’s biggest brands with printing and folding carton solutions. Coburn’s breadth of expertise, technology and experience provide the level of service their leading brands customers require for delivering carton solutions that command in-store attention.

What benefits do you achieve by using our product?

ChromaChecker provides a number of benefits to our workflow. We first implemented ChromaChecker Capture to verify proofs and optimize the proofer to target the GRACoL standard and get as close as possible in matching the proverbial “stake in the ground.”

Next, we integrated ChromaChecker Uploader and Operator Reports with our offset presses running the X-Rite Intellitrax measurement devices. These new reports provide great feedback instantly to the operator, showing how to quickly adjust the press to get it to match GRACoL (stake in the ground) and document when the sheet is salable, due to the E-Factor, which has decreased our make ready times. This process has eliminated the subjectivity of press operators having to “eye ball” the sheet and determine if it was close enough. Now using the E-Factor number, all our operators understand what level of match is required and the consistency of production has improved dramatically. 

Then, we eliminated dedicated press runs to get our G7 curves built. We have implemented ChromaChecker’s G7 color bar with our Intellitrax systems. Every sheet that is measured can be used with ChromaChecker to iterate our plate curve to accommodate the natural mechanical and atmospheric changes that happen to an offset press over time. This has completely eliminated dedicated press runs, while delivering a higher quality product at a much lower cost. And, since our presses are running production more consistently (due to E-Factor), and the curve data is from real production data from multiple operators over multiple days, the press is significantly more consistent in hitting the reference (and matching the proof).

We are now wanting to track make ready versus production on an operator basis, press downtime, press maintenance tasks, and other key variables all within ChromaChecker. ChromaChecker’s capability to create Continuous Improvement weekly reports for management and operators showing productivity versus company average will be very valuable in order to get the whole team to buy in and understand which employees need additional training to help improve performance.

What is the best feature in your opinion of our software and why?

Since we sell color, the ability for ChromaChecker to collect our press data, in real-time, and report the salability of the sheet is probably what we use it for the most. This extends to verifying how any print job ran, with complete reports, that we can provide our customers. This is pretty handy for our salespeople to provide to their customers. 

What would you tell a potential customer about ChromaChecker?

ChromaChecker provides a complete manufacturing framework that has helped our company transition from a Graphic Arts printer, to a Print Manufacturer. Before, we were using different individual products to attach different aspects of our production. But, all products were independent and didn’t relate to the entire manufacturing environment. ChromaChecker has the manufacturing framework for assessing, tracking, and correcting proof, press, plate, lighting, and instruments, all in one location. This is unlike any other solution. We are still growing with our use of the software, and haven’t implemented all of its capabilities. However, ChromaChecker provides us with a road map to help us understand what we should be doing in order to maximize our capabilities and profitability. We are looking forward to taking advantage of the built-in training programs to help our operators, but our business has been so busy we haven’t had the time.

Rick Akam