What it takes to be a PSE supplier

We at PSE pride ourselves on quality, and we hold all of our manufacturers to the highest standards. This means that you, our customers, can rely on us to produce amazing pieces of offline marketing materials of the highest quality, in full, on time, every time. I tagged along with our production department to a site visit. Read below to see what it takes to become a PSE Supplier.

Our suppliers printing floor

Introduction

The PSE supplier that we visited was based in rainy Wales. A large building that housed lots of big toys for our production team to have a look at. This particular company has been operating since 1898 and is still a family run business. It must be a lovely place to work as their employee turnover is as little as 1.7%. The first thing we did was go into their board room and ensured our system was up to date with the services they provide. We do this so we can ensure we can always get the best prices by comparing multiple manufacturers for every single job we receive. 

Accreditations

ISO 9001 & ISO 14001

We prefer to use suppliers that reach and maintain ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 accreditations. The ISO 9001 accreditation is defined as an international standard for quality management. In short, it means that our supplier meets a certain standard for quality. Find out more HERE. The ISO 14001 accreditation is an environmental regulation that ensures our suppliers are environmentally responsible. Read more HERE. 

FSC & PEFC

We also check to see if they have achieved either FSC and/or PEFC certificates. These are sustainable forestry certification systems. By having these certifications, it means that the paper is sourced from sustainable forests and all the pulp can be traced back to the forest from where the tree was fell. This is important to us because we pride ourselves on being an environmentally friendly company. Secondly, if you have these certificates and print the logos on your Direct Mail, you receive discounts on your mail which we pass on to you, our customers. Read our sustainability article to find out more. 

The Tour Begins

We then moved on and had a tour around the premises. (This was a very detailed inspection covering every element of the quoting and ordering system, production line, warehouses, delivery. I’ll give you the highlights) Starting in the offices, our production team were on the lookout for any issues that could arise when estimating. This check is to make sure that all prices we give are 100% accurate first time. A few more checks on how jobs were created and then we were whisked off to art working and plate making.

The production team checked the artwork procedure to see what internal checks were in place to ensure the artwork is always correct while I looked at how Litho printing plates are made. These massive plates are produced on a machine that etches a plate for the different colours ( usually Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and black). the production crew followed me in, and again were looking for holes in the system where jobs may fall through. (there wasn’t any, I’m glad to say)

Big machines

So onto the printing floor where two huge printing presses were located, these can print thousands of pages per hour. The plates from before are wrapped around rollers on the printing press and ink is passed over them. The ink sticks in the grooves and as the rollers pass over a piece of paper, the ink sticks to the page. (This is an oversimplified explanation of a modern printing press, but you get the idea.) While I was admiring the big machinery, our production team were checking to see what procedures were in place for checking quality, colour and ensuring jobs are up to our standards of quality. 

Litho printer page feeder

Assembling and cutting. 

Again, more big machines here. The assembly of the booklets and multiple page flyers was very much automated. The hoppers are loaded up, and the machine took care of the rest. Grabbing the correct pages in the correct order sorting them and then stitching them together. Out the end comes a fully complete booklet. (There are some calculations here over pagination that I have glossed over. Things like calculating how the pages get stacked and sorting booklets that aren’t divisible by four etc.)

Cutting took all the heavy lifting out of the equation, quite literally. The machines were on hydraulic platforms that lifted the pallets of paper and books to the guillotine then, vibrated all the air out so the operator could slide them into the guillotine and trim as needed. Again our production staff were checking to see what quality checks were in place. 

Sorting

The tour continued through the warehouses (I won’t bore you with racking full of pallets ready for fulfilment) but our team were checking again to see if jobs were easily tracked, packed, and shipped. The sorting rooms were pretty impressive. The first room housed machines that packed envelopes. However they did this on an individual basis. The machine reads the address from a small barcode then knows that they need leaflet one, four and seven packed. The next envelope to be packed may need leaflets one, two and four. This means they can load various leaflets and by importing a CSV file of what goes where and can pack them at a fantastic rate. 

The second sorting room housed two sorting machines. To get the best deals on delivery, this particular supplier had invested in two sorting machines that could sort up to 50,000 pieces of Direct Mail per hour! Direct Mail was loaded in one end. The other end spat them out into direct rows. Each row was a different sorting house of Royal Mail. By doing the first part of the job that Royal Mail does secures a substantial discount on postage, that we can pass on to you. 

Conclusion

We are pleased to say that this particular PSE Supplier passed with flying colours! PSE take quality very seriously and love being the agency you can trust with your offline campaigns. That’s why we do these audits with all of our suppliers on a regular basis. These checks ensure that the claims we make about quality are backed up, while offering services that can save you money, such as pre-sorting. We take these audits in earnest and believe they are a great way of keeping only the best suppliers who produce the best pieces on time, in full, every time. To find out more about our other services, click here. Thanks for reading what it takes to be a PSE supplier. Please share this post using the links below.