At Southern Graphic Systems (SGS), members of Louisville 619M combine science and skill in the perfect formula to meet customers' needs for complex packaging solutions.

Testimony that SGS and its production crew achieve this goal was delivered last year by one of the company's major clients. Kraft Foods chose SGS to be its single source supplier for Kraft's North American Packaging and Promotional Business. SGS also received the Kraft Foods Supplier Excellence Award for its significant contributions in technology, superior quality and delivery, reduced time to market, supply chain effectiveness, and productivity.

Debra Mays prepares analog proofs at Southern Graphics Systems in Louisville, Ky.

Debra Phillips, who works in the preflight department at Southern Graphics Systems in Louisville, prepares to make a packaging template for a cholesterol pill.

Harold Decker uses a G4 Macintosh to perform PhotoShop magic on a customer's art file. Of the changes in technology while he's been in the trade, Decker said: "If someone had told me this 35 years ago, I wouldn't have believed it."

Louisville 619M Pres. Richard Street, right, greets plant manager Tom Tripton at Southern Graphic Systems' Louisville facility.

Southern Graphic Systems was founded in Louisville in 1946 by Robert MacKay, Edward Augustyn, and Jack May. With five plants by 1958, the company was bought by Reynolds Metals, which later became part of Alcoa. SGS now has some 30 facilities in 17 states, Canada and Mexico.

SGS offers package design and prepress services for offset, flexographic, rotogravure, and metal decoration printing. Other services include workflow management and consulting.

The Louisville facility specializes in prepress and plates for offset and cylinder production for gravure. Local 619M members' work at this facility is geared to presses at package printing plants around the United States and Canada.

For offset and gravure, the company has consistently invested in new technology and training for its long-time employees to boost quality and fast delivery to customers.

Chris Cash, SGS prepress manager, said the change in technology is "phenomenal. The environment we work in is entirely different. It has been revolutionized by the computer. There is a dramatic difference in the time it takes to do things."

Local 619M member Harold Decker, who has worked for the company for 35 years, said the processes have changed "500,000 percent." Decker began as a general worker and now finesses customers' packaging on a G4 Macintosh computer in electronic prepress.

Decker said when he started in the industry, "everything was done by hand. Then came scanners and stripping film. Then came big mainframe computers. Now we have desktop, where everything is coming in digital. If someone had told me this 35 years ago, I wouldn't have believed it."

Decker said the digital advances save customers money and time. "We had jobs that took weeks to months to do. Now, we turn them around in a day."

As for the switch from hand skills to digital prowess, Decker said: "I love it. It's a challenge every day. My daughter asked me if sometimes I want to stay home and not go to work, and I said: 'No, I enjoy going to work.'"

Cash noted that advances within the past three years in graphic computer programs like PhotoShop greatly expanded what designers can do in conjunction with prepress computer wizards like those at SGS. He said these advances allow designers to send files that approach a gigabyte of data with hundreds of layers for multiple-color shadows, 3-D effects, overlays, and other special effects that have replaced visually "flat" packaging designs.

"This gives the design people a lot more flexibility than they used to have and enhances creativity," Cash said.

Revolution in proofing

Digital proofing is another development that has revolutionized prepress turnaround time, Cash said. "We used to have to print a proof on a press and send it back and forth to customers for corrections," he said.

However, now the company uses DuPont's WaterProof system to produce digital proofs on files that can be sent to customers over the Internet. Customers can then input those files into their proof printers, which are calibrated to match the one at the SGS facility, and view and correct the proof within minutes.

Cash noted the future for digital proofing that already is under development is the capability to view proofs in real time on line over the Internet.

The first step in prepress at SGS is "preflight," where Local 619M members check that customers' digital packages include all the elements needed to complete the job – fonts, images, copy, and instructions.

Digital preflight

One of the preflighters, Herman Kaiser, began with the company 30 years ago as a general worker. He's also worked in table stripping, proofing, plating, and shipping and receiving. He explained that the Barco platform they use makes color separation "much easier because Barco is vector-based."

Cash said digital preflighters also check and adjust bleeds, dies, trapping, cut tolerances, and other mechanical issues for the assembled package. "When they get done, it's a done deal," he said.

Color management is a major issue for the entire printing industry. For SGS, it is crucial because the company produces packaging with brand-significant colors for trademarks and products.

One of the solutions for SGS, Cash said, is the acquisition of "value-added services" such as design studios, so the company can become a "one-stop shop for creative processes."

Another solution is the plant's technical manager, Jim Fowler. Fowler said that he considers himself lucky to have worked "hands-on" in nearly every area as technology changed over the 40 years that he's been in the industry and at Southern Graphic Systems.

Fowler said he gets a lot of requests for services to improve the application of ink for better color control. "It's one of the ways to improve printing," he said. "If we can accomplish that, that makes us a better supplier and them a happier customer."

Fingerprinting color

Toward color control, Fowler "fingerprints" customer's presses for color output. He plots color gradations from presses' output as gamma curves that are then measured and plotted against density and dot gain. "So, we get a snapshot of what a press reproduces against Chromalin proofs," he said. By modifying ink density and viscosity, he said, presses' gamma curves can be made to match proofs. He said "crossovers – between midtones and low tones – are the most dangerous" to control.

Gravure cylinder production, Fowler noted, "historically lagged behind in technology, but it is now catching up." SGS uses Max Daetwyler's digital-to-gravure (DTG) system to input to Hell HelioKlischographs to engrave digital information onto copper and chrome-plated cylinders.

Fowler said that, like digital prepress, digitalization of cylinder production has greatly reduced turnaround time. Before computers, he said, cylinder preparation and engraving could take 12 to 15 days. Now the usual turnaround is three to five days, he said.

Local 619M Pres. Richard Street, who previously worked in the SGS gravure department, said the gravure unit members do everything from electroplating the metals onto the 400 to 1,000-pound cylinders and finishing the surfaces to engraving, proofing, and preparing the cylinders for shipment to printing plants.

"The gravure process is demanding," Street said, "but it produces some of the finest printing results."

Street also pointed out the mechanical grinder among the automated cylinder finishing machines. "There are still occasions when they need our skills to get the highest smoothness levels." He noted that the digital operations "also require extensive skills – just a different set of skills."

Louisville 619M members Fred Melcher, left, and Tom Goff check the digital Hell HelioKlischograph that engraves images, type, bar codes and press information on a rotogravure cylinder.

Louis Peters, left, and Mike Mueninghoff pause as a K. Walter CFM grinds a cylinder to the right size and puts a mirror finish on it.