We’d like to be able to take jobs from our clients online, and have them track the jobs’ progress through the factory. How can we do this?

To answer this fully, mention also needs to be made of other forms of electronic ordering – it’s not unusual that some customers will not want to log on to a printer’s website and enter their order, duplicating effort they have already put into raising an order in their own systems. We have developed a system that will take any number of electronic order formats and map the data received to our system. Typically this could be EDI messages, spreadsheets, structured emails or CSV files, the advantage being these are created seamlessly by the clients’ systems. When you are dealing with large numbers of orders we’ve found this approach is more common than online ordering.

That aside, the printer needs an MIS with an underlying structured database, a web server that can be accessed from the outside world and web pages that can interact with the data stored in the MIS.
Online ordering falls into different categories: stock call-offs, catalogue-based ordering, online PDF templating and bespoke products.

Tracking the order is a question of reading relevant data from the production control MIS module and displaying it in web pages. Technically this is not a difficult thing to do but care is required – some customers will understand that a job can be printed, bound and delivered just hours from the scheduled delivery time, others might not be quite so comfortable with this. So in reality, the tracking data is often restricted to the production events where the customer can make a difference – for example, showing dates for proofs to be sent out and when they are expected back, in order that the job can be delivered by the agreed date; or linking to couriers’ dispatch management systems so the customer knows when to expect delivery.

Allowing a customer to access the system is a simple task. A new user code with suitable password is created that ties a user login to a customer code. The online system will have in-built security to ensure that the user only gets information relevant to them.
Nick Bourne

---

A photographer is threatening to sue us for printing photos – supplied by our client as part of their artwork. Isn’t this our client’s problem rather than ours?

No, you’re both in this together, I’m afraid.

The photographer will have to prove that it was his photo that was used, and not one that looks similar to the one used by your customer. If it is his photo, and the customer was not licensed to use it, the photographer can claim for unlawful copying against both you and your customer. You may be off the hook if the photograph was incidental to the main story, but if it illustrates something central to the story, it’s difficult to claim it was incidental. You and your customer would both be liable for the photographer’s losses caused by your unauthorised use: you would be ordered by a court to stop using the photograph and return all copies.

It’s always a good idea to establish the ownership of material that’s likely to contain copyrights – this will mostly be graphics, text and photographs. You can do this by searching registers kept by the various organisations representing copyright owners. And ensure you have written warranties about the customer’s right to use the material he provides you with, together with an indemnity from him if claims from third parties do crop up.
Anne Copley

---

We’re a small printer about to move into CTP and we’re unsure about the respective merits of violet and thermal. Which is best?

I would suggest that you follow the path of least resistance. Think about what’s going to make life easier. Do you really want to invest in a darkroom equipment and start mucking about with plates and chemicals? For me, thermal imaging, which can be carried out in normal light conditions, is preferable to visible light – it is a clean, processless, daylight operation.

There has been a significant move away from visible-light processing in recent years, with more and more firms shifting to thermal imaging. We still carry visible-light equipment, but for the past six months, our sales have been entirely in thermal kit.

Another advantage of thermal is in its quality – it has always produced better results. Thanks to hybrid screens, thermal imaging is more precise; we have a Suprasetter with a maximum line screen of 400. That equates to 300 lines on a Prosetter violet and 250 lines on photopolymer plate, so you can see there’s quite lot of difference. Thermal kit also tends to have a smaller footprint, saving space in the pressroom.

There are some advantages to visible light systems: plates are cheaper for one thing, but you need to bear in mind the volume of work you produce. Up to a couple of hundred plates a month, visible light is probably going to be cheaper, but anything beyond that and you lose the price advantage. There also used to be a significant capital cost difference: visible light machines used cheaper, more reliable laser heads and service contracts reflected that. But that’s no longer the case, as thermal technology has come down in price and reliability has improved. In the three years we’ve been selling Suprasetters (and there are now something like 200 laser units out there) we’ve only had one return.  

Visible light technology is still developing. Agfa and Fuji are working on processless, visible light plate, but until processless violet becomes a commercial reality, thermal will have the upper hand.
Lance O’Connell