How to Print Regulatory-Compliant Color for Life Science Packaging
Studies show consumers identify medications by color. Life Science Packaging Printers must ensure the color on the package matches the product inside, across various substrates and printing processes, to ensure safety, authenticity, and compliance for electronic recordkeeping.
Challenges
Accurate packaging color is necessary for consumer safety and to minimize the risk of counterfeiting but producing consistent color across different types of packaging is challenging.
- Incorrect color can lead to expensive product recalls
- Color is difficult to match between transparent, translucent, and metallic packaging types like labels, films, metallic foils, and blister packs
- Physical color references and standards can fade over time, leading to incorrect specifications
- Regulated products require compliance tracking, but electronic recordkeeping is difficult to maintain
Solution
Digital color solutions enable Life Science Package Printers to effectively communicate color requirements with brands and efficiently formulate, produce, and control packaging color. By implementing an end-to-end color workflow that includes a spectrophotometer, ink formulation software and quality control software, package printers can confidently print color a range of transparent, translucent, and metallic packaging like labels, films, metallic foils, and blister packs. In addition to ensuring tolerance, digital color solutions also create an automatic compliance audit trail for electronic recordkeeping.
Results
- Improve color communication and quality
- Know what is achievable before going to print
- Achieve consistent color on multiple substrates
- Formulate quickly and reuse leftover ink
- Validate tolerance adherence and catch color drifts early
- Integrate compliance data into electronic recordkeeping
- Scale from a single location to a global, multi-facility enterprise
How It Works
- The brand digitally communicates product color and acceptable tolerance.
- The printer uses ink formulation software to create an ink recipe based on the substrate.
- The printer uses a spectrophotometer and software to calibrate and profile for the specific printer, ink, and substrate combination.
- Throughout the run, the printer measures patches to analyze quality.
- The color measurements are loaded into quality control software to compare against tolerances and generate scorecards to share with brands to validate compliance.
- Quality control software generates print quality scorecards to submit to brands and generates a compliance audit log that details each event with operator ID, date, time, etc. for use in electronic recordkeeping.
Featured Products
Professional color management device and software to profile monitors, proofers, and presses and track and verify quality, and capture spot color measurements for the highest level of color accuracy.
Formulation software to create recipes that consider the substrate to achieve digital specifications and work-off existing colorants for improved sustainability.
Quality assurance software that enables printers to provide brand owners with real-time scorecard data that confirms compliance with brand specifications, including G7 and PSO guidelines, for closed-loop production.
A digital color reference repository to communicate brand colors to printers and set clear expectations for color achievability on multiple substrates.
Handheld 45:0 spectrophotometer to measure the color of ink and substrates before, during, and after print production to ensure color stays on target.
Versatile scanning solution that provides press room flexibility for measuring color with spot, manual, and automated scanning capabilities and integrates with closed loop and third-party solutions to deliver a mid-range solution for ink key control adjustments.
Ultra-fast, automated press-side scanning solution to measure a color bar on a typical press sheet in less than 10 seconds, ideal for high-end, high-speed printing/converting operations.
Handheld sphere spectrophotometer to measure color values on reflective surfaces like metallic packaging and foil blister packs.
Achieve Color Success
A digital color solution from X-Rite enables Life Science Packaging Printers to produce consistent color across different substrates, track compliance, and generate an audit trail.
