About Print Quality Exchange (PQX®) Expert

Complete Transcript Below:

Chuck Schonert:

Okay, Dianne, welcome. Appreciate you spending time with us to go over PQX. Just for everybody, a brief history, if you could, on your association with Idealliance?

Dianne Kennedy:

I began working with Idealliance back in 1984 when it was called the Graphic Communication Association. At that time, the president of the company I worked for in Chicago was on the board of directors for GCA, and we became very involved in the development of an ISO standard called SGML. And I was one of the first trainers for SGML, first in the U.S., and then in the U.S. and Europe, sponsored by, at that time, GCA. I’ve had a long association working with them as a consultant to develop various technology specifications. I joined the staff as a Vice President in 2003, and I worked full time for Idealliance until approximately 2016. And now I have a contractual relationship off and on through the development of new standards, including PQX and its sister standard, PRX.

Chuck Schonert:

Very good. So a lot of history you have already up to this point. And just, if you could, give us a little overview, if you wouldn’t mind, for us not altogether familiar with PQX? In fact, I’m bringing myself up to speed on it as well, but if you can give us a overall, like a broad stroke, and a basic understanding of what it is?

Dianne Kennedy:

PQX stands for Print Quality Exchange, and it began as part of the Print Properties and Color Metrics working group in 2016. So its origins are with Idealliance, and that key Idealliance printing working group. At the time it was developed, the need was expressed primarily by… Well, it was across the print supply chain. Every printer, if they have a customer that they’re printing for on a routine basis, is asked to do print quality of reports and print quality sampling and testing every so often. This is the way that the print buyers, and primarily large brands, track the printer, the location and the quality that they’re delivering. And they use this decision and they use this tracking of print quality by the printer per location when they make their buying decisions.

Dianne Kennedy:

What’s happening and is still happening, was happening then, is that every printer was using their own format to report print quality. Probably in 2015, maybe a little earlier than that, there’d been a shift from densitometers to spectrophotometers and the development of CXF, which is another ISO standard, and it’s the way that we exchange colorimetric data. But the other kinds of quality that are reported on were just done in a very ad hoc fashion. What that meant, was when the brands asked their printers to report quality, they were getting reports in many different formats and they couldn’t load them into quality tracking databases. It’s a quite expensive task. Some of them, or their third parties that they employed, had staffs of people keyboarding in the values that were in print quality reports in all these different formats, so that the data could be keyed into quality tracking databases.

Dianne Kennedy:

There was some analysis around 2014, ’15 done of the expense that everyone was going to, to try to pull the data out of all these various sources for long-term tracking. And also, there were two other factors. One was the timeliness, if a printer filed a print quality report… And typically these were done like in PDF form or they were a hard copy of some sort, maybe faxed even… From the time the report was received by the brand, till the time it could be keyed in to their quality tracking databases, it took quite a bit of time. It was expensive. And then the final thing was it was error prone.

Dianne Kennedy:

So the bright idea was, if we had a standard format to report print quality, just like we have a standard format to interchange colorimetric data, then that would basically streamline the print quality supply chain, lower the price of print. And that’s important for all printers because if the brands have to calculate all the extra work they’re doing to track quality into the price of print, it becomes more expensive and they can purchase less print. So it was an economic factor. And so in 2015, the Print Property working group began looking at a standardized format for doing this quality reporting, and that’s the origins of PQX.

Chuck Schonert:

Excellent. Thank you, Dianne.

Chuck Schonert:

So what you would say is that, basically, manufacturing is what kind of drove this. They wanted a common language to drive all this data that they want to report to, drove this as far as into ISO standard?

Dianne Kennedy:

Actually, I think the real driving factor was coming from the print buyers who were incurring this expense to re-key all this desperate data into a standard format that they could use, and it’s always a partnership. If you look at the supply chain, there’s the buyers, and then there’s the printers. And then there are some third party companies that provide services around that. And so I think it’s really both. And there was quite a push from the brand side to have some sort of standard way of exchanging quality data.

Chuck Schonert:

Okay, that makes perfect sense. How is the PQX going to be integrated into a daily production?

Dianne Kennedy:

I think that the jury’s out on exactly how that’s going to happen. This is a new ISO standard. It’s just now, in June, been published one year. And as far as I know, there’s very little implementation of the standard. The reporting of print quality today is not highly integrated into any automated processes. Certainly, we can gather colorimetric data, which is very important, in a standard format and exchange that without PQX. But there are a lot of other kinds of quality data that need to be exchanged. For example, if you’re printing for a brand and you’re printing packaging that has barcodes on it, the quality and readability of that barcode is critical. The printed item can look great, but if you can’t scan the UPC code, then it’s worthless.

Dianne Kennedy:

The other factors that brands wanted reported have to do with defects and defect tracking, and also with registration. So PQX addressed really four categories of defects, and those are color, barcodes, registration, and defects. And so how this is going to be integrated, I think, remains to be seen because the reporting on this is actually, and probably will remain for a while, a human activity, gathering observations and measurements from different tools, and consolidating them as some sort of report that you send back to the printer.

Dianne Kennedy:

One of the challenges of developing this PQX training course was that there really is no software existing that does PQX. So as part of this, I have worked with a software company that is strong, is a Microsoft Gold partner, in the XML space because the exchange of this data is in XML, just like CXF for color is. And so we’ve developed as part of the training materials, some prototype or trial or training software so that people taking the course can actually begin to create their own XML PQX reports using software because to do it manually is possible.

Dianne Kennedy:

I was the editor of the standard when it was published by Idealliance, And then later the ISO standard. And all of the samples and so forth that I developed for the standard were hand crafted, if you will, using Notepad or something. But for real world application, you have to know a lot about XML and there’s a lot of chance for error if you aren’t really using XML tools. So one of the exciting things about this course is not only learning about the details of PQX, but actually having the experience of creating your own print quality report that you can export ISO standard XML, and you can send a PDF similar to how you do it today.

Chuck Schonert:

Excellent. So at the end of the day, what’s nice is that now with PQX, everybody’s going to have a common language.

Dianne Kennedy:

Right. And the people that worked on the development of PQX came from all sorts of printing types. There was packaging, but there were people that were involved in other types of printing as well. And a lot of people that participated had process control or quality control tools already, as did the brands had their own databases. This standard, it’s not specific to any one company or brand. But because it’s an XML, it can be easily manipulated and transformed into the fields that they use. So I don’t know that software is going to be developed specifically with PQX as the model, but rather I think what will happen is that when PQX is sent to them, they’re going to take those data fields and reorder them, and maybe even rename them, and automatically load them into their print quality tracking databases on the receiving side.

Chuck Schonert:

Very interesting. Very interesting.

Chuck Schonert:

Next thing I’d like to ask you is, and you’ve done a little bit of it already, but if you can get a little more in depth, if we can touch on the development by Idealliance and yourself to drive and how you shaped the PQX before its approval by ISO?

Dianne Kennedy:

I think PQX was developed just like any of the Idealliance specifications were developed. I was kind of the partner with Don Hutcheson through the development of G7 back in like 2004 to 2008. And so I don’t know that Idealliance shapes the standard. I think what they do is actually facilitate the brainstorming and creative process by bringing together the partners across the supply chain to develop something that meets the need of the supply chain.

Dianne Kennedy:

And PQX, as I said, it started as part of an activity of the Print Properties Committee, but when it became apparent that the use of this is going to go beyond just Idealliance membership and that we needed some international participation, because, quality, the way it’s judged and reported really… Like defects are a good example. There’s no standard nomenclature for defects. They vary by the type of printing. They vary by the global region that you’re in. And so we moved this purposely from an Idealliance specification to become an ISO standard so that our members could collaborate with the international community. And printing is global, so the reporting of quality from remote locations across the world is really the end goal.

Chuck Schonert:

Awesome. No, it makes sense because, yeah, you could have a local specification and then next you know, you have to have an ISO, now it’s an international specification.

Chuck Schonert:

Any feedback on how it’s been received by brands, print buyers, third-party vendors, like you were talking about earlier, the print buyers, you get any feedback from them whatsoever yet?

Dianne Kennedy:

Well, there’s a group that is a brand’s council, and they were really, I think, instrumental in pushing for this. It’s kind of like when G7 was developed, G7 was developed because that’s what the print buyers wanted. It gave them higher quality and more reliability. And on the printer side, it also reduced costs because the make-readies were cut to a minimum because of this calibration method. So I expect the same thing to happen with PQX, but I think the training is a huge, huge step in having everybody understand what it is and how you could create this standardized print quality report, how you can map your own fields into the ISO fields, and how you might implement it in your own workflows.

Chuck Schonert:

Okay. Just receive word, training is going to start up on July 30th, so that’ll be the end of this month. We’re July 1st right now. Anything you can shed any light on as far as the start-up of training, any insights there?

Dianne Kennedy:

I’ve been developing the training with Amy Slay from Idealliance, and we’re trying to have a good mix of lecture material with demonstrations of how this works, and also providing all the people who are enrolled in the training course with software that they can try within their own workflows, using their own quality reporting tools, and so forth. So, we’re hoping that this will really help jumpstart the use of PQX across the industry. And it may take, for example, some projects where some printers and their brand get together and actually create these kind of reports and interchange them, and so forth. It takes a while to develop software and new procedures, but I think we will find that the end goal does provide efficiencies. And that’s what it’s all about.

Chuck Schonert:

Oh, I totally agree, Dianne. Just interject real quick, I remember when Don came on… And you might have even been there frankly in Franklin Park—

Dianne Kennedy:

I was.

Chuck Schonert:

—in 2006, where I used to work at. And how it started up, it makes perfect sense what you’re saying now, because when it started up, remember we were doing G7 curves, making them with graph paper, and it was working.

Dianne Kennedy:

Yes.

Chuck Schonert:

Great, but look where we’re at now with the different software we have to create G7 curves, and we’re making plate curves. I mean, it happens like right now. Instead of hours, now it’s minutes. So I see exactly where you’re going with that as far as you… And it’s at the startup, it’s going to be a little more like G7 started up, but look at the results provided us as far as advancing the industry.

Chuck Schonert:

So, my last question is going to be, any next steps on the drawing board? Is there anything that you already see maybe with the base line you have right now on it, but things that you may be looking towards in the future as far as PQX?

Dianne Kennedy:

I think, just like with G7, the first steps are the training courses, which I worked with Don and we did a lot of training courses, and trial test, press runs, and so forth. And I think that’s kind of the phase that we’re in until we can see what this is. And I will say that there is a sister standard to PQX. Both of these have the number ISO 12606, and actually PQX is part two. This is the standard print quality report exchange in XML. The other part of that, which I think in the end, printers are going to find will save them a lot of time and money, is a standardized print quality specification from the brands.

Dianne Kennedy:

Right now, if a print buyer employs a printer to print to something and they say, “Here’s what we want you to do, we want you to meet these reference color metric values. And we want you to have… The bar code readability has to be a certain percentage.” And so forth. They are communicated by style sheets that are in all different kinds of formats and the printers have to like noodle through those and figure out how to set up their press, and all of that to meet the buyer’s expectations.

Dianne Kennedy:

The second part of ISO 20616 is PRX, which is a standardized XML exchange of, “Here’s my requirements printer. Here’s what I want you to do.” So that’s the second part of this. While you can use them together, it’s not a requirement that you use both. But that other piece of standardization, the communication about print quality, is on the horizon. That second spec, PRX, is in the publication process of ISO right now. It’s been approved and they’re getting ready to send it to press and create the final PDFs, and so forth. So on the heels of PQX will be PRX. And so they’ll be kind of like bookends, if you will, so that this communication between the brands or the print buyers and the printers can be automated.

Dianne Kennedy:

And I think some of the hope of PRX is that, that XML that comes down and says, “Here’s what I want my requirements to be”, can actually be employed by press control systems, to actually set up everything so that the press runs can actually meet the requirements of the brands.

Chuck Schonert:

Well, I tell you, as you’re talking about this, Dianne, and I was doing my homework on this, and it just sounds like G7 all over again to me, because I remember the beginnings of it. You know what I mean, you start a little bit at a time, and where this can eventually go to or where it’ll be in 10 years. Well, look at G7 over 10 years, right?

Dianne Kennedy:

Yeah, yeah.

Chuck Schonert:

Anyway, that’s all I have for right now, Dianne, but what I’d like to do is ask you in closing, do you have any final comments that you’d like to make or anything you’d like to say additionally about PQX?

Dianne Kennedy:

No, I would like to encourage people to sign up for the training course. Or, if you’re a print buyer, the training course can be either for the print buyer QA people, third party QA organizations, which there quite a few of those as well, and even tool manufacturers to see how you can implement this within your own quality tools. So I look forward to the launch. We’re doing a lot of work between now and the end of July to get this ready, but I think you’ll enjoy it. And a bonus of having some prototype software to work with, we did that with curve, with G7, and it’s the same sort of situation so that you have some tools. It’s not a spreadsheet, but it used to be for G7, so this is a way that you can try it out and see how it fits for your organization.

Chuck Schonert:

Excellent. Well, this is exciting stuff, Dianne, it’s always good to see when something starts out like this and where eventually it’s going to head to. And between the first version, PRX, and then PRX, I mean, those two together, seeing where these are going to go, it’s really neat to see where it heads in the future.

Chuck Schonert:

But I want to thank you for taking the time with me today, Dianne. It’s really appreciated, I know you’re a busy lady, and thank you very much.

Dianne Kennedy:

Okay. Thank you, Chuck.