GPO’S QATAP PROGRAM NEEDS SOME COSMETIC SURGERY
In the
commercial print market there are really no
universally accepted standards for quality of
various printing attributes. That has resulted
in situations where jobs the printer feels are
just fine are viewed as unacceptable to the
customer. Because printing is still an art (not
a science) there is significant room for
differing opinions.
Many years ago
the Government Printing Office (GPO) decided it
would address the quality issue problem in the
Quality Assurance Through Attributes Program
(QATAP), which actually sets standards for
almost every attribute of a print job, including
such things as marks, smearing, color match,
trim size, etc., etc.
The QATAP
standards were developed at a time when all
QATAP Level II high-quality 4-color printing was
done on sheet fed presses, and when there was no
such thing as high speed digital one color
printing, let alone digital color printing.
As high speed
heat set web production became more prevalent,
customers began to use if for their important
4-color jobs like magazines, tourism materials,
etc. For longer run lengths, sheet fed presses
typically can not compete in price and
production time with web heat set presses.
Agencies and GPO are aware of this, and expect
and/or encourage bidders on major jobs who are
going to be using web presses.
Unfortunately,
however, it is the opinion of most experts that
printing attributes consistently achievable on a
good sheet fed press cannot be regularly and
uniformly obtained on most heat set web presses
in use today. This does not mean that the job
on the web press is not good, does not have
accurate color fidelity and good registration,
and “look good” to the buyer and the end
user—but it does mean that the web presses’
capabilities are different.
GPO’s QATAP
standards for Level II printing, which is most
commonly used for 4 to 6 color jobs, are
demanding, and in some cases impossible to meet
consistently throughout a web run. As a result,
there is a need for specifications for Level
II work that reflect the web presses’ consistent
production capabilities in the real world.
For digital
printing, agency customers will often indicate
that digital printing is acceptable, or even
desired. However, they also request that the
job meet Level II QATAP requirements. The
problem is that GPO has determined that digital
color printing does not consistently meet Level
II quality standards. For one thing, there is
often a slight variation in color from the
original to the end product. While this may be
acceptable to the customer, it would make the
job rejectable under QATAP. Although GPO has
been working on digital print standards, more
needs to be done (now) to enable agencies to
utilize digital printing to save money on short
runs, or for advanced copies of a longer run, to
avoid having to start up the web presses earlier
than might otherwise be necessary.
