Question: Why Do So Many Canadian Stamps Have A Small Number Of Imperforate Pairs?

I am an engineer and have had considerable experience with developing and producing product labels under ISO standards. I have zero experience in stamp production. I have submitted countless First Article samples for approval but this has nothing to do with Inspection documents or drawings. An approved First Article demonstrates what the item should look like but supplies no information regarding tolerances.

Under ANY kind of QA system, there has to be a way to distribute and communicate what is and is not within tolerances. This is not simply a company requirement, it is an ISO requirement. Of course small companies do not have to document what they or do what they document, they have the freedom to crank out whatever they want and just hope the customer does not send bad quality material back to them. But no company that has a large government contract works without being ISO certified (for example American Banknote Corporation is a Certified ISO company).

Additionally, consider this from a logical perspective. Say a stamp producer sends the PO the first production run of a new stamp. As the stamps go into use, they will not stick to the envelope. The PO has to stop selling them. Now what? Is the printer simply going to eat the cost and replace them? How does any one figure out what the adhesion strength is supposed to be? Somewhere there HAS to be documentation that describes what the adhesive is and how is it supposed to perform. This is what the failures are tested against. This is what any financial resolution will be based upon.
Don

Edit: Here is an example of a ISO Inspection procedure http://www.simplyquality.org/nasa/53-arc-0010.pdf

Did not know you were affiliated with ISO documentation..Good stuff

I was also involved with ISO9000 documentation, Process management with the largest telephone company in Canada. Trained by Rumbler-Brache out of the USA
We also had what is called {and this would apply with P.O. and Stamp printers} called Customer/Supplier agreements...This is to make sure Canada Post received 90%+ of what was offered by printers...If the printer as you said screwed up, ya..It would be the responsibility of the print company to fix the mistake.

You are correct Don.

If the imperforate stamps floating about are indistinguishable from their perforated counterparts aside from not having perforations it would seem that they do not exist because they were inferior somehow and slated for destruction. I assume that they were either pinched in order to make money for somebody or came from a non-perforated sheet that found its way out to the counter. The former seems more likely since the production process, if I understand it entirely and correctly, would make it highly unlikely that a lone sheet missed being perforated amongst its brethren.

Hi Robert,
My sympathies on your ISO experience.

I helped take my company through the ISO certification process and it is a tedious effort. Few people like doing documentation and even fewer people like being held accountable. Most people treat an ISO (or QA) audit as an 'opportunity for improvement' but rather as a trap that will reveal that the company is not doing what it should be doing.

Ultimately, QA and producing a quality product is not about documentation, it is really more about company culture. Every person has to have pride about what they do and how they do it. (For example, hanging some banners around or achieving a ISO cert means little if the employees are underpaid and pissed off.)
Don

@canadian That sounds like a very high number.
Plus you mentioned that at the end of the print run
several sheets are waste
5,000 x 50 per sheet + 250,000
For the last 20 years most Canadian stamp print run quantities
are between 2 - 3 million stamps.
So around 10% wastage?
What a lot of waste.

You appear to have a lot of inside knowledge of what
goes on at security printing plants.
Did you work for a printer? Ashton Potter perhaps?

lithograving: I was alerted to a question you posed on wastage and where I worked. Although I said 'Adieu' on page one of this thread, I owe you an answer to both questions which I have sent to your email.
I Don't need to be a 'Jerk', 'Troll', 'Corrector of minor errors' any more! lol
cNA