A Study on the Assessment of Quality of Printed Sheets in Offset Sheet-Fed Printing 

Abstract

The quality parameters of printed sheets should be controlled constantly during the sheet-fed offset printing process. This allows the detection of any problems in the initial stages of the printing process. The final control of the quality of printing sheets will eliminate error products before delivering to the costumers. The results of this control should be analyzed continuously. The total quality management (TQM) is an effective method in controlling, doing statistics, and assessing the errors in the offset printing process. Simultaneously, this method delivers the main errors frequently occurred in the printing process. This paper presents the possibility of using some tools of the TQM method such as Pareto chart, Ishikawa diagram, and 5xWhy to analyze and assess the quality of printing sheets in sheet-fed offset printing. The studied results show that the two main errors of the printed sheets are hickeys (occupied 29 %) and low density (occupied 17%). Moreover, the causes of hickey error are analyzed and shown in this paper.