Quality Control for Procured Printing

Quality Control for Procured Printing furnishes Federal agencies with a full range of services providing a comprehensive experience for producing your printing projects.

Planning

Quality Control for Procured Printing (QC) offers electronic publishing support.  This facet of QC is an in-house desktop and electronic publishing consulting group that services all customers who use GPO’s Printing Procurement process including, but not limited to, government agency editors/authors, printing personnel, and project designers.

Among other things, we are available for making recommendations for cost effective specifications, research on industry trends, and correct file creation.

Reviewing

QC is instrumental in the procured printing process. We provide the most efficient and economical guidelines for printing and binding all Government publications.  During the production of a job, our mission is three-fold: pre-flight, review of proofs, and on-site inspection.

Preflight
QC evaluates the entire scope of a job, including all materials to be used and design elements involved, based on the end use of the project. It ensures the job will be manufactured correctly and efficiently.

Review of Proofs
QC offers assistance in reviewing proofs for accuracy. Items that will be checked include the type of proof, line screen, traps, register, and layout.  The content of the proof to the lasers and the color to the originals supplied by the agency will also be verified.  Finally, a report showing all printer’s errors or author’s alterations, and the action to be completed, will be sent to the contractor.

On-Site Inspections
Upon request, QC is available to conduct inspections for the purpose of setting a standard of quality. These are performed at the production location and customers are always encouraged to attend.

Inspecting

QC has a role in almost every stage of GPO’s printing procurement process.  Our department specializes in evaluation of compliance to specified quality standards.  Some things we do are conduct on-site inspections, evaluate contractors' samples, and review quality complaints.

Our QC team inspects samples and evaluates contractors who want to do business with GPO.  We also rate the contractor’s ability to meet the GPO standard of printing quality through a series of tests using criteria from The Quality Assurance Through Attributes Program (QATAP).