February score shows full point improvement

February's overall score improved by more than a point over January, with better showings almost across the board.

The month finished with an overall score of 92.23 compared to 91.13 in January.

Better calibrated plates, press times closer to 12:30, tighter registration, fewer defects, and a perfect score in Post-Press finish times all helped the cause. There was also improvement scored in photo quality and inserter accuracy.

In terms of trends, ad quality dropped vs. January by almost 5 points, largely because of recurring problems with ads that rastorized or had issues with separating black. Interestingly, many of these ads were our own -- house ads to promote Restaurant Week, for example, which came from a contractor hired by Maribeth.

I talked to Maribeth about the issues the quality team was seeing, and Maribeth talked to Ken Soucy in Creative Services who re-worked some of the ads in an effort to get them to reproduce better. The hope is that as a result of the discussion among Ken, Maribeth and her contractor we'll see an improvement in the quality of house ads and an improvement in March in the Ad Quality score.

Our quality efforts are being recognized in the region. Don and I will participate in a May workshop on color management and process control sponsored by the New England Newspaper Association. More to come on that.

To see the complete February results, check out the link to the right or click here.

Paul