Ricoh products achieve UKAS accredited ISO 12647 certification

Ricoh has become the first digital press manufacturer to be issued with a UKAS accredited ISO 12647 certification.

Print and Media Certification (PMC) has issued the first ever UKAS accredited ISO 12647 certification for a digital press manufacturer to Ricoh UK Products.

The certification for the BPIF ISO 12647 colour quality management scheme was awarded at the end of November, with a scope covering the company's digital toner based production and continuous inkjet production at the Customer Experience Centre. 

The certification was for the ISO 12647-2:2013 standard, with latest version of the BPIF ISO 12647 scheme now taking in all the ISO 12647 print standards, production methods and pre-press processes, thereby enabling certification for all the various print production technologies.

Product testing was performed on Ricoh’s Pro VC60000 and Pro C7100sx, selected as they are the most “recent and representative technologies used in the CEC,” according to Ricoh colour champion Jason Dale.

ISO 12647-2:2013 specifies process parameters and their values to be applied when producing colour separations, printing forms and print production for four-colour sheetfed and web-fed offset printing presses.

It is also applicable to printing on cardboard material for packaging and also for drying methods such as heat-set, infrared and ultraviolet.

PMC certification manager Jon Stack said that he was "delighted" to have issued the certification. "PMC's audit team were highly impressed by the sophisticated integrated management systems implemented by Ricoh in their operations at the Customer Experience Centre, and their performance in the audit's product tests."

"The current version of the BPIF ISO 12647 certification scheme now gives the opportunity to all printers, including digital, lithographic and flexographic, as well as suppliers of reprographics, design agencies and print managers, to demonstrate colour quality through a recognised and independent third party certification," he said. 

He added that the scheme is a bolt on to ISO 9001 requirements, and that it can easily be integrated into an existing ISO 9001 system, or indeed any ISO management system, as the management system structure has now been harmonised across standards by ISO.

"The ISO 12647 scheme has taken a global lead in putting together a set of colour quality system requirements, which can be applied in all printers, and an accredited certification approach, which gives customers real confidence in the certified printers supplying them." 

BPIF membership director Dale Wallis commented: "As the only UK certification body providing accredited certification for ISO 12647, PMC continues to support the BPIF's world leading scheme, which brings together robust product quality compliance and a colour quality management system to achieve consistently great results for customers."