System Brunner and MAN Roland
Greater process efficiency was the main topic at the "Druckforum 2008" in Stuttgart, Germany

As was the case with most of the presentations at this year's Druckforum in Stuttgart, the topic of the evening shared by System Brunner and MAN Roland dealt with greater efficiency in the printing process. On 31 January, more than 150 print experts were in the audience as Peter Sonntag and Tobias Vorbröcker jointly presented solutions for "Boosting efficiency through process standardization".

Tobias Vorbröcker from MAN Roland got the ball rolling by explaining how much time can be saved in color matching for MAN Roland sheetfed presses by using a color control system (ColorPilot with okBalance or Instrument Flight System Brunner, with the priority on gray balance). Based on CIP3 presetting, one of the first prints is measured in a few seconds by the fastest scan measurement device on the market today, the results are analyzed by the software, and clearly displayed on the monitor. The recommended corrections are made automatically and the printer has the first standard-compliant print within a few minutes, can maintain the quality throughout the run, and thus save a lot of time and paper. This results in a high level of process efficiency and the more demanding the subjects are, and the higher the expectations of the customer, the more time is saved.

Peter Sonntag from System Brunner demonstrated the importance of process optimization from prepress through to printing for efficiently achieving the desired results from the press. By using the System Brunner PRINT EXPERT Suite (control and evaluation of the entire process chain), enormous savings are achievable in the prepress department. In his experience, the mistakes this avoids in prepress and the higher print quality it assures also reduces costs in job acquisition, internal sales support, and in postpress operations and logistics as well. At the end of the day, these potential benefits can bring a printing company considerable additional profit, not to mention the know-how gain of the company's staff.

In the concluding discussion moderated by trade press journalist Kurt K. Wolf, the remarkable success of automatic color control on web offset presses using the QuadTech inline Color Control System combined with System Brunner's Instrument Flight was examined. Almost 400 web offset presses all over the world have been equipped with CCS-IF in recent years which confirms the high potential savings that System Brunner's comprehensive process control can provide. Already one-third of the MAN Roland ColorPilot control systems installed worldwide are equipped with okBalance and this number is growing. So it was no surprise when the moderator asked Tobias Vorbröcker whether one may expect MAN Roland to show automatic inline color control also on a sheetfed press at drupa; a possibility that Vorbröcker neither confirmed nor denied.